Since these types of fish are burrowers/sifters, wouldn't they hide a lot? I don't want to buy a cool fish and never see it, or just see it once a month or something. Please post your experiences with any type of watchman goby regarding hardiness, aggression, eating, hiding, activeness, or anything else. Any complaints or things you love about your watchman goby. Thanks in advance!
watchman goby
- Thread starter reefnoob
- Start date
salt_for_brains
Alabama Reefer
I have a diamond watchman goby. He is out and about all the time sifting sand, moving shells around or just perched looking around. He has been super hardy, can hold his own with tank mates and is an aggressive feeder. He eats anything I put in the tank and especially loves tearing off a mouth full of algae sheet from the clip. At times it will sift sand around a coral in the sandbed but no real complaints. He has been in the tank about 3 years and does a great job keeping the sand looking new.
wontonflip
I failed Kobayashi Maru
+1 salt....My watchman is out all day long sifting.
salt_for_brains
Alabama Reefer
Only a coral or base rock in the sand, IME and it's not all the time just occasionally.
AnthonyTheNewbie
Reef enthusiast
My Diamond watchman is out all the time, and he tends to be a bit of a bully. He takes mouthfuls of sand, and chases after my fish and either spits it out on them, or waits till there sitting still and then just dumps it on them. It stresses my fish out sometimes, but he only does it so often. I've also seen him grab hermits and pull them into his little cave...and then like 20-30 mins later I see him pulling them right back out. They have quite a spunky personality. My sandbed is beautiful though. Worth the trade offs in my opinion.
My rocks aren't on the sand though, and I'm not able to push them all the way down onto the glass. I'm worried about them burrowing too much and my rocks falling. I have my tank set up as two islands. The small island I don't worry about, since all the rocks are less than 2-3 pounds each, and they are only stacked two rocks high. But my bigger island is what I'm worried about. I have that island set up so that there are only 3 rocks touching the bottom with more rocks stacked on top. But the rocks on the bottom are really big, at least 15 pounds each and at least 1 foot long. I was thinking since each of those rocks are so big and cover so much area, that if the fish dug a hole the rocks wouldn't move or collapse, since the hole would only be like 1-2 inches wide. Am I correct in thinking this? Thoughts?
So how exactly are they cleaning the sandbed? Or are they just turning the sand? Do they eat pods? I'm worried about that too because I want to own a mandarin in the future, although I have been researching a lot about training them onto frozen, I just want to make sure there is still enough where the mandarin can still eat a couple every hour.
Mine doesn't sift the sand at all. He's a yellow watchman with the blue spots.
He basically just sits about two inches in front of his cave during the day. He's almost always visible but never really leaves the same general area. VERY territorial....and while he isn't actually capable of hurting anything else in the tank he opens that mouth REALLY wide and chases off anything that gets close. He's also faster than you would think. If I startle him he moves like a wrasse. It's crazy.
Honestly, he's kind of a boring fish. It's a good fish for a small tank or something but he doesn't really do much.
He basically just sits about two inches in front of his cave during the day. He's almost always visible but never really leaves the same general area. VERY territorial....and while he isn't actually capable of hurting anything else in the tank he opens that mouth REALLY wide and chases off anything that gets close. He's also faster than you would think. If I startle him he moves like a wrasse. It's crazy.
Honestly, he's kind of a boring fish. It's a good fish for a small tank or something but he doesn't really do much.
AnthonyTheNewbie
Reef enthusiast
He mainly sifts the sand to pick up scraps that have gone untouched during feeding (Whole reason I got him). As far as pods go, i don't have very many visible in my tank yet. My tank is only like 2-3 months old. But yes, he can pick up mouthfuls and either sift it, or spit it around. Either way helps stir up anything that might of got buried or been sitting down there. Can't really help with the pod question though (Although I'm assuming they would eat some if they came across them seeing as they eat just about anything lol). And I have my rocks stacked up in utter chaos and none of them are held with any form of apoxy. The tunnels they build underneath aren't really (IMO) big enough to move them(I also have some fairly large sized LR and BR). My Engineer Goby hasn't made a mess either and he literally has a whole tunnel system through the whole tank. So, I think you should be fairly safe.
AnthonyTheNewbie
Reef enthusiast
I'm not sure on that one, only shrimp I've put in my tank so far are Peppermint (I don't trust the LFS around me to not give me something loaded with Aiptasia). Worst case scenario the watchman might create another den for himself? (Not sure, someone with more experience would have to chime in here sorry)
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BL1
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You've had what, a pistol shrimp or watchman for a year?
AnthonyTheNewbie
Reef enthusiast
The pistol, he's debating on getting a watchman now.
BL1
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It should, they're like clowns and anemones though, it's not 100% that they'll pair up. Also, some watchmans are sandsifters and others are the shrimp type. You'd need to make sure you know which you'd rather have. If you get the shrimp goby it'll stay vey close to its burrow with the shrimp and not move around much. The sandsifter how ever will move all over the sandbed eating.
BL1
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Yep, that ones a sandsifter. If you go to the goby section on LA you can filter the results to only show sifters or only shrimp gobies.
Is any sand size ok? Because I think my sand grains might be on the bigger size. On average they are ranging from maybe 1mm-3mm, with some grains that are bigger, around 5mm. Do you think this grain size is ok? I don't want the goby hurting itself, because I think it takes the sand in its mouth and it comes out of his gills.
AnthonyTheNewbie
Reef enthusiast
It doesn't have to sift the sand to move it around. If it's too large, it won't try and pass it through. It'll just take mouthfuls and spit it out to move the sand out of it's way. It should be fine.
