Bumble Bee

[Batzman]

Hey there, I know very little about these fish but I saw one and decided to look into getting one. But apparently they need slightly salty water? can they be kept in a non-salty water tank with other community fish?

 

[nmonks]

Can they be kept in moderately hard water freshwater tanks? Yes, generally without problems. Can they be mixed with community fish? That's the tricky bit. They are incredibly difficult to feed, and if there's any competition at all, they will starve. I'm sure most BBGs starve to death in aquaria, and the problems people have with them are nothing to do with water chemistry.

Provided your community tank contains only fish that feed from the surface, such as halfbeaks or Endler guppies, then you're probably fine. Likewise fish that eat too slowly to compete for live and frozen bloodworms would be good to, e.g., whiptail catfish or kuhli loaches. But mixing them with boisterous tetras, barbs, dwarf cichlids etc would be a bad idea.

For what it's worth, my specimen appears to sustain itself primarily on baby cherry shrimps.

Cheers, Neale

Hey there, I know very little about these fish but I saw one and decided to look into getting one. But apparently they need slightly salty water? can they be kept in a non-salty water tank with other community fish?

 

[LauraFrog]

There are several species of fish sold as 'bumblebee goby' but they aren't all the same species. They are very, VERY difficult to tell apart and to be certain you would have to count scales under a microscope - not much good if you want the fish to stay alive. As a guide, on Brachygobius xanthozonus the black band nearest to the anal fin (first anal band) is interrupted (usually appearing only on the top of the fish but not banding all the way around it.) B. xanthozonus is a freshwater fish but it will tolerate brackish water very well... so if you wanted to keep BBG in a freshwater tank, that's the best one to go for. If the tank is hard, as nmonks said you'll probably get away with any of them provided you can feed them.

I have successfully mixed BBG with 'no no' boisterous feeders (guppies and mollies) and had no difficulties. What I did was distracted the fish on the surface with some very cheap, fairly large pellets (that the fish can't swallow down straight away) that float very strongly (can't be pulled down at all, so the pellet-worriers stay on the surface). They are mainly alfalfa, so it doesn't really matter how many they eat.
I also found out that plastic airline was a perfect fit to the end of a syringe. So I loaded a syringe with frozen bloodworm, whacked a length of airline on it, and squirted the bloodworms into the gobies' caves. The other fish never even noticed because they were too busy squabbling over the pellets on the surface and steering themselves in circles worrying the pellets. That's how I always feed my gobies now and they have been thriving with said tankmates for six months.

The other alternative is to have a lot of water movement and chuck in so many bloodworms at once that the other fish can't eat them all... you want to have good filtration though, if you intend to do this.

BBG have a reputation as fin nippers... I thought this was a load of rot, and couldn't understand where it came from, until we went away for a week and I decided it was safer to leave the fish unfed than try and get a fish-clueless person to come and do it. I came back and the BBGs had nipped their tankmates. So it seems they only nip fins when they are hungry, which is a perpetual situation in an overstocked community tank when they are being fed only flakes that fall to the bottom through a ball of boisterous fish. And that's the sort of tank these rumours come from.

 

[pippoodle]

hubby rescued 2 from being flushed the other week
they are doing really well in a freshwater tropical tank (temp 24 degrees , nitrates 10 , nitrites 0 , ammonia 0 and ph 7.2) with longfin minnows golden minnows ,WCM minnows, Oryzias Javanicusi (java rice fish) ,khuli loaches,pitbull plecs,and shrimps
i'm feeding them on thawed frozen bloodworm every other day and small bits of mushed tuna (i swish it around the tank so it looks like the stuff is swimming and they get it when it goes past) , they are now getting nice and filled out and brighter colours , they seem a lot livelier than when they went in the tank
The man who was going to flush them had said they were being fed on flake foods - but i dont think they were eating much

I have shrimp in the tank and i think they are munching the babys aswell