Pistol Shrimp and Gobie???

[Matthew]

Hello. I have just added a Pistol shrimp and a Gobie to my salt water tank, and I have a question concerning their relationship. I know that the shrimp and the gobie are supposed to live in a hole under a piece of live rock, and that they are supposed to to help eachother survive. However, I have a little bit of a problem. I I added them today, after acclimating them and everything, but the gobie is just siting in one spot and the shrimp is no where to be found. When I put the shrimp in, it swam around a bit, but then just went behind a rock and disapeared. Then I put the gobie in, and it just sat there, and did not even try to look for the shrimp. My question is, is this normal? Will the gobie find the shrimp? Will it not find it and just die? Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Matthew

[hibye]

If anything the shrimp would probaly find the gobie.Also what kind of gobie is it exactly

[Bifferwine]

Is it true that your tank has been up and running for two weeks? That is too soon to add a shrimp, which are extremely sensitive to water parameters and shouldn't be added to a new tank early on.

The shrimp may also be stressed if you didn't acclimate it long enough. Inverts need a longer acclimation time than fish, usually several hours.

But if neither of those is the case, animals will be shy when first added, especially gobies. Give them a while to get used to their new home (several days) and they should find each other eventually.

[Alexander]

its never a gaurantee that the fish will pair with the shrimp. it happens a lot but its not certain, no the fish will not die if it doesnt hang with the shrimp. they just work together as a team to have a home and to watch eachothers backs. this isnt usually a major concern in a home aquarium unless you have aggressive preditors

[reeffreak]

Not every shrimp goby will pair up with any pistol shrimp and vise versa.Did you research to see if the goby will/can have a symbiotic relationship with that partucular pistol shrimp?Were they sold as a pair?Most of them I see people release them close to one another so they don't end off making a burrow separate from one another.

[cgoodman381]

what types of damsels do you have in your tank? 72 is pretty decent size, do they all get along ok?

As for the pair, something like that could take a little time to develop.

[MamaJones]

what kind of gbby do you have?

I have an orange-spot prawn goby...it is suppose to be the kind that pairs with a pistol shrimp, but we were told to wait until the tank is at least a year old until we were to get a p. shrimp.

How is your goby doing? ours seems to be fine, but is a scaredy cat...he zooms off to his hole if my kids even walk by. And he eats only if food happens to come to him...do you have similar experience?

[Altohombre]

umm if your tank has only been up for 2 weeks there is no way you should have anything in your tank other than live rock, live sand, and water. You aren't close to being cycled yet.

[NewbReefer]

The day he joined the forums and would have added his experiece to his profile was the day he typed that post so I would bet his tank was only 2 weeks old when the shrimp and gobie were added so unless he used cured live rock, live sand, and water from someone elses system, (and even then theres a good chance they wouldn't make it) there probably both dead now. *sigh* not necessarily his fault, he may have got bad info from a LFS just to bad he didn't find this place first.

[dustin_P74]

he could have meant 2 weeks old from counting after the cycle finished