Gobbies And Puffers.

[Joemuz]

Can any gobbie or puffer species be kept in a community aquarium or not?
Thanks, Joemuz

 

[Fella]

Can any gobbie or puffer species be kept in a community aquarium or not?
Thanks, Joemuz

If you take a look at the pinned topic in Oddballs you'll see puffers aren't community fish. However, you can keep Figure 8 puffers in brackish water with bumblebee gobies without a problem.

 

[Joemuz]

But can you keep gobbies in with community fish?

 

[pica_nuttalli]

depends--there are a lot of gobies out there maybe if you let us know what fish you have and what gobies you want, then we could figure this out. but the good news is that most brackish gobies are relatively friendly, so long as the other fish don't fit in their mouths

 

[Fella]

I think gobiidae is the biggest family of fshes, and as such, they are all so different, it would be hard to make a generalisation. Some are the colour of mud, some are bright orange, some sift sand, others eat fishes, etc.

If you say what kind of tank, and what kind of gobies are available to you, it would be a lot easier to help.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

actually, i really like that. from now on, "gobies are the color of mud and bright orange."

 

[Joemuz]

actually, i really like that. from now on, "gobies are the color of mud and bright orange."

180L
1 sailfin pleco
1 Knife fish
Black neon tetra
Guppies/mollies
corys

Can get hold of bumble bee gobbie

 

[DarkEntity]

Bumblebee Gobies are brackish. Your tank is freshwater.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

yep, no bumble bees for you! but peacock gudgeons might be an option. could someone with more experience with them confirm or deny the recommendation? thanks.

however, i'm concerned about the knifefish. most knifefish are efficient predators and easily grow to a size where they would eat everything in your tank (except for the pleco, of course). what kind of knife do you have? if you don't know the exact name, then please give us a good description.

 

[andywg]

Bumblebee Gobies are brackish.

Are they?

Then how come Naomi Deventhal (a biologist who specialises in studying gobies) notes that most BBG in the trade are Brachygobius doriae which can be kept equally well in fw and brackish. She notes that she keeps them in FW because she likes planted tanks.

If your FW is acidic and hard then there are likely to bo no problems keeping them in FW.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

you mean "alkaline"?

even in that instance, the OP shouldn't have bumblebees with his particular stock b/c he's essentially got a softwater tank there.

any opinions on the peacocks, andy?

 

[nmonks]

Hello all --

Some bumblebee gobies are not only freshwater fish in the wild, but blackwater fish too, living in places with acidic, tannin-stained water. I'm not sure why such conditions aren't ideal in home aquaria, but I'd venture to suggest diet and water quality (esp. nitrates) are relevant here. There are some freshwater fish that do poorly in freshwater because they are nitrate-intolerant, but thrive in brackish water, because the salt reduces the toxicity of nitrate. Mollies, for example.

In the general community aquarium adding gobies is debateable. Your problem isn't necessarily water conditions or chemistry, but rather feeding. A lot of gobies are slow feeders, and things like guppies and cories will simply take all the food before the gobies get a chance. Personally, I'd tend to recommend only keeping gobies in community tanks with fishes that feed at different levels of the water, or feed very slowly, or on totally different foods. So gobies could be mixed with surface feeders (e.g. hatchetfish), slow feeders (e.g. Badis badis), or wood-eaters (e.g. clown Panaque).

My gut feeling is that even if the bumblebee gobies didn't get eaten by the knifefish or stressed by the freshwater, they'd still die from starvation.

There are some nice mid to large sized freshwater sleeper gobies that can work very well with plecs. These are predatory fish and will simply eat the livebearers and the tetras, but they are fine with anything of similar size. Oxyeleotris marmorata is one example.

Cheers, Neale