[Inaudible].
You might notice that I'm in a new location today.
And the reason for that is I would like to show you Frank's tank. Now,
if you have been following along for a while,
you probably know that I have a funny catfish named Frank.
And some of you have been asking about how he's doing well,
this is Frank's new tank.
So enjoy Frank and his comedy routine behind me.
As we talk about govies today. Now, as we're going to talk about gobies,
I'm not going to talk about all of them, right?
So today I'm just going to be focusing on the gobies that are the sand sifting,
gobies, the gobies that are burrowers and the ones that form the symbiotic
relationships with shrimp. Now, I don't know about you,
but when it comes to gobies,
my favorite thing about them is that symbiotic relationship that they can form
with those shrimp. If you've never seen it, it's, it's incredible.
I encourage you to go and search for some videos,
but the way it works is the shrimp and the Gobi together are going to have a
borough.
The strip is kind of going to act like a homemaker is going to stay in that
borough, make sure that, um, the sand is pushed out,
but there's enough space in there for the Gobi to swim around.
It's going to keep things clean.
Now the Gobi to do its part is going to guard the borough,
but it's also going to make sure that it and the strip are getting enough food.
So it's a really cool relationship to watch,
especially if you have a natal reef tank it's, it's absolutely fascinating.
I've got a strict Gobi pair in my reef tank.
I've tried so hard to get videos for you guys, but it's,
it's a little bit difficult,
but it's so cool when you actually get to see it in action. All right. Now,
if you've seen these videos, you know, I like to break things down today.
It's a little bit more difficult,
but we're going to break things down into the small gobies and then all of the
other gobies. Right? Okay. Before I get into that, I want to know from you,
if you've ever kept a Gobi, what Gobi have you kept?
Was it a sand sifter or not? Alright,
let's jump into those small gobies. So when I say small,
I mean about two to three inches in size,
these guys are going to be better suited for some of your nano tanks and about
10 gallon tanks is going to be all that they need.
First off is the clown Gobi. They're really cute.
They like to perch and hang out on top of rocks.
It almost reminds me a little bit of lump sucker fish,
but you can get them in a couple of different colors.
A lot of times there's yellow. There's a like an orange yellow,
and then you can find them in a green as well.
Next up is going to be your high fin red banded Gobi. It's a mouthful,
right? So as you might notice,
there's a little trip icon on the white board. Now with that,
it means that that is going to be one of the gobies will pair up with those
shrimp and form the symbiotic relationships. So throughout the rest of this,
if you see that little shrimp up there and that's what that means,
keep an eye out for it. Next is going to be the Yasha Gobi.
And lastly, it will be our neon Goby.
So there's not too many of those gobies that fall into that small category.
Let's jump on into, I guess the medium size.
First off we have our orange spotted Gobi,
the yellow Watchman Gobi, our diamond Watchman.
Now a lot of times, if you are going through your local fish store,
I do see more diamond watchmens than most other gobies that are
out there. They're fairly common fish. Next,
you are going to have your tiger Watchman.
You have your sleeper banded Goby, the pink bar go eat.
Next up is the court jester Goby.
We have our pink spotted Watchmen Gobi.
And lastly, the wheelers are SCOBY. Now that's not all of the gobies.
The very last Gobi is going to be the engineer go B.
It is the largest of all of them that I talked about today.
They can be up to a foot in size. That's a pretty massive fish in your tank.
Make sure if you have an engineer,
go be that you're going to have at least a 55 gallon tank for them.
The rest of the gobies can be anywhere from a 10 gallon tank.
All the way up to a 30 gallon tank is about all that they're going to need.
Now I mentioned at the beginning that these guys are sand sifting,
burrowing fish, and like to hang out on the bottom,
they're not going to be swimming up in the water column.
They're not going to be like Frank. Um,
so you do need to make sure that you have a sand bed for these guys.
Um, and too, if you want to keep corals,
just be kind of careful because a lot of these sand sifters are going to pick up
mouths full of sand and they're going to dump them.
They don't care where they don't. Boom.
So sometimes that could be on your corals.
You don't want corals accidentally dying because a Gobi dumped a mouthful of
sand on it. And trust me, I've heard so many stories where that happened.
So just do your research before you buy your Gobi. Um,
maybe consider putting them in a fish only tank. Alright,
that's all.
I've got to talk about four different take sizes and different types of goalies.
Let's go head to the kitchen and talk about nutrition.
Okay?
Let's talk about different kinds of nutrition and foods that you can feed your
gobies right now, gobies are considered omnivores,
but for the most part, a lot of them are carnivores,
which means when you are getting foods,
you need to look for those rich needy foods that have a lot of protein and a
good bit of fat for them.
Now I'm curious if you've got a Gobi in your tank,
let me know what its favorite type of food is.
So typically in these videos,
I like to break things down into three different groups.
And one of those is the gel D I Y foods.
And I'm still going to talk about that today,
but we'll talk about it a little later on.
So now we're going to start with our dry and pellet foods.
So one thing that makes pellets really great for gobies as a lot of times,
they'll sink down through the water column, hang it and, um,
land down in the Sandy bottom, where those gobies will hang out.
So foods like this,
coral frenzy are going to be great for feeding the only your gobies,
but any corals that they happen to fall in or around. So this is one option.
Um, you can also use a food like NIOS, it actually has goji in it,
which is going to help bring out some of those colors,
especially any red pigment. So if you've got some of those pink gobies,
definitely consider giving them some of this food.
Next step is the PE mices pellets.
I'm a big fan of the PE my SIS line, whether it be the frozen or the pellets.
But one great thing about these pellets is that they are quick sinking.
They're little bit denser.
So they're going to fall to the bottom and get right to where you're going.
These are hanging out.
Now the last one dry food I've got to talk about today is the TDO reef
nutrition.
This is another one that has a lot of nutrients in it and is good for those
small amounts, gobies. Okay, next up.
And this is a little bit different. We've talked about live foods in the past,
but today, especially with govies, we're going to mention one cruise.
Now this is one that you can get on the Marine Depot website,
but you have a lot of different options when it comes to live foods.
For example, if you are going to your local fish store,
a lot of times you can pick up a variety of the reef, nutrition, pods,
or you can even order them direct online. Now,
if you guys have seen my Instagram,
you saw when I got the package of them last week, I'm impressed.
How many of you guys recognize that reef nutrition box? Um,
I didn't even have anything about it.
And you guys knew exactly where it came from.
So they are a great company to work with. And like I said,
we'll send them directly to your door next. When it comes to the live foods,
you can always go through your filter socks and pick out the pods that are
already in there. Now, if you pick them out,
you can get one of those little pod habitats and kind of dump them back into
where your pod habitat is.
That's going to help to seed your population of pods and just help them to grow
exponentially. And it's going to be food sources,
always in your tank for those gobies.
Now the last type of food that I'm going to talk about today is the frozen food.
Do you feed frozen foods in your tank? Let me know below. Okay.
So a whole bunch of different options.
We're going to go through them kind of quick.
So we have the reef multipack again. That's great.
If you've got a variety of different fish in your tank that you're feeding, um,
I know it's really hard for you guys to see, but some of these, um,
once they start to melt and break down a little bit in the water column,
they're going to float around and it's going to provide, um,
a good fun method of enrichment for those fish to swim after and get that food.
Now, krill is another good one that you can feed your gobies, right?
As well as Brian shrimp.
Now I know that you might not see these that often in your local fish store,
but you can definitely buy these brands online. And a lot of times, um,
it's one that big wholesalers that fish wholesalers will use to
feed their fish. Now, lastly is going to be the prime refi, wreak nutrition,
as you can see, it's really easy just to pop out one of those individual cubes.
So if you have an annotate consider getting one to ones with blister packs,
all right, that wraps up everything I've got to talk about.
When it comes to nutrition,
let's head up and talk about some of the issues that your gobies might face.
When it comes to your gobies or any other fish.
You really do want them to live a good, long, healthy life.
Now,
let me give you some tips that I've experienced issues that go bees have run
into in the past things that are fairly common. Now,
the first one is probably the biggest one, all of these gobies,
for the most part that I've talked about today, um,
with the exception of some of those smaller ones, they're sand sifters,
they like to burrow in the sand. They like to sift through the sand,
which means your sand mud is really important aspect of your tank.
You don't want to go beat to be the first fish that you add,
especially not to a brand new tank.
You want to give your sand and your substrate some time to mature and to grow.
So I would recommend adding your Gobi after your substrate is I would say
four to six months old,
just to make sure that there's going to be enough nutrients in there for them.
When they're going in sifting through that sand, while you'll be feeding them,
other foods, the ones that are sand sifters, that's a part of their diet.
It's a part of their lifestyle.
So you want to make sure that you are setting them up for success.
Now,
something that I've seen more commonly with gobies than with other fish
is internal parasites and worms. Right now,
I'm going to give you a story to kind of show you why this is important.
If you are paying attention to your fish every day,
if you're spending time with them, if you're watching them, observing them,
you're going to know right off when something is wrong. Now, several years ago,
I had a diamond Gobi. It was one of the healthiest eaters in the tank.
And after a while,
I would start to notice that it would come up for food and we just eat and eat
and eat and its belly would be full and it would go down and it would sift
through the sand.
And I would come back about 30 minutes later and noticed that its stomach was
sunken in. Now, when you see that sunken in stomach,
that's a good sign or an indicator that something might be wrong with your
fish. Now,
the reason I tell you to watch and observe is because if you start to see those
things happening, say you feed and then an hour later, your fish,
his stomach is starting to be sunken in.
They should be holding onto food for a little bit longer.
So when you see that that's going to give you an indicator that you maybe should
try medicating.
When I mentioned earlier in the kitchen that I was going to talk about gel or
foods, this is where they come in.
So you can mix in medications with those gel and DIY foods.
And when you're feeding the fish, when they're gobbling up that food,
because they always seem hungry, that medication will already be in there,
it'll get into their system and it'll hopefully help them to kick those
parasites. Another product that's out there.
That's already got the medication mixed in is Dr. G's. Um,
you just have to go and look for this.
There's a bunch of different places where it's available.
You might have to order it online, but that is an option.
And it does work next up when it comes to gobies,
um, some of them can be relatively have sensitive skin. Um,
if you notice your Gobi kind of looking slimy,
or maybe like it's surrounded in a snot ball,
that's a good indicator that it's really stressed out and something is wrong
with that slime coat.
So you can do something like adding Dr. Tim's first defense or API has a
product called stress coat.
Both of those will do a good job at helping to boost their immune system and
help to protect their slime coat.
Now always make sure that you're doing your water changes. When you get, um,
new fish, you're gonna want to make sure that you're dipping them or core team,
all super important things.
Now let's talk about enrichment.
So gobies they're sand sifters. They like to sit through the sand.
If you have a Fowler tank,
it would be a great idea to move around your rocks, kind of redecorate.
Think of when you're in your own house and you move the furniture around,
you kind of come in and you're like, wow, it looks, it looks new and exciting.
And it just it's very refreshing.
So the same thing goes for changing up your fishes environment,
especially allowing them to get to some sand that they might not have been able
to get to before. So that's one big way to add enrichment to their lives.
Now, in the past,
I've talked about adding enrichment in the sense of changing up the lighting
patterns. Now, gobies, you don't want to do this with,
I can't stress that enough gobies are jumpy fish.
They are going to need to be in tanks that have lids on them.
I so many times I've heard people tell me stories of even with lids go,
we somehow were able to get out. You don't want that to happen to your Gobi,
and you want to make sure you're eliminating any stressors that would cause them
to jump. So that's why you don't want to use, um,
changing up that lighting schedule or, you know,
programming a thunderstorm or something, um, as a wait for enrichment for them.
Another thing that you can do for your gobies to switch things up to them
is those live foods, right? We talked about Copa pods earlier,
so you can switch the type of Copa pods that you are giving your gobies.
That'll be something new and different and fun for them to enjoy.
Just like you getting, you know, a new, fun breakfast cereal.
It's not the same old thing that you've been having.
Another way that you can enrich their lives is through tank mates, right?
So gobies are great for community.
They get along with a lot of other fish that you might have in your reef tank or
in your Fowler tank.
One group that they don't get along well though with is other gobies, right?
They tend to be very aggressive towards the same species or towards other
species of gobies. Um, with the exception of,
if they have a mated pair of gobies,
typically those obviously are going to get along a little bit better,
but use some caution before putting two gobies in a tank together that are
not those mated pairs. Now,
if you're not sure if your fish will go good together,
always check out that fish compatibility chart.
You can find it on Marine depot.com.
Look and see if the fish you want to put in the tank together are going to get
along well. All right guys, that's all I've got for you today.
Thank you so much for watching. I look forward to seeing you next time.
Let me know in the comments below what video you are most looking forward to
next.