Learning to speak Violet Dragon Goby 3/9/09
Greetings! I've been reading on your site and others about dragon gobies having
recently acquired two. They started out in my 80 gallon community tank and
seemed very happy living with the rest of the community. Digging their own
tunnels under the decorations, burying themselves from time to time into the
sandy sections created for them. The community consists of :
2 Opaline
gouramis 2 peacock eels 2 adult black lyre tail mollies 2 adult silver mollies 4
pot belly mollies 25 silver molly fry 1 plecostomus 1 African feather fin cat
fish 12 red Platys
One of the gobies seems to be more reclusive than the
other hiding in caves most of the time, rarely seen even at feeding time unless
the decorations are disturbed and the other, active and visible especially at
feeding time.
Diet consists of Algae tablets, brine shrimp, Spirulina brine
shrimp and blood worms with occasional sprinkles of flake food. I noticed that
the recluse had developed a film of what appeared to be a fine coating of sand
or tiny air bubbles all over his body. At first I thought it was ICK and treated
the tank accordingly for 7 days...treat, wait 48 hrs, water change and treat
again, wait another 48 hrs water change wait 24 hrs and treat again. At the end
of the treatment there was no change so I asked the local fish store and
determined it might be Velvet and treated for that. After 48 hours we finally
got them into their own 65 gallon brackish home with a salinity at the low end
of brackish .001 since moving them into their brackish home, they have both
taken to floating vertically taking large gulps of air and blowing it out
through their gills swimming horizontally from time to time but spending most of
their time in that vertical position. What I think was velvet seems to have
reduced in size but they don't seem to be doing as well in the brackish tank as
they were in the fresh water tank...
Any recommendations or thoughts would be
appreciated. I looked on line but couldn't find anyone with similar issues.
Thanks in advance
Wizard
<Greetings. I'm not familiar with this particular
problem, and certainly haven't seen Gobioides spp. do this. Velvet and Ick could
both be treated simply by maintaining these gobies in the brackish water system.
Raising the temperature to around 28-30 C (82-86 F) will speed up the life
cycle, and that will shift the parasites from the host into the water column,
where the salinity should kill them. Personally, I'd raise the salinity up to
1.003 at least; this won't stress your filter bacteria, but will help the
gobies. Do otherwise take care that water quality is appropriate. Don't feed the
fish for the time being, but after a couple of days, if they've settled down,
offer some live food and see if they behave normally. One last thing. Gobioides
spp. are territorial, and the one you aren't seeing much of is clearly the one
bullied by the dominant fish. Take care to put hiding places at each end of the
tank, so they can at least space themselves out. Cheers, Neale.>
Violet gobies, moving, sys. 9/23/08
Hi Neale,
<Shawna,>
I'm moving in a couple of days and need to know how to
transport my 2 gobies. It's a 10 hour trip. I also have 2 zebra Danios and 2
Plecos to transport. I don't have much room in the front of the moving truck so
I am limited to things I can do. Do you have any suggestions? I don't want my
fish to die on the way up there. Thanks, Shawna
<Go buy two or three big
buckets with lids: something of the order of 5 gallons. I got mine for a shop
where they sell paint, for painting walls and stuff. I think professionals use
these buckets are used to store large quantities of paint. Anyway, half-fill
with water, put a sensible number of fish in each of them (e.g., two the gobies
and the Danios in one, the two Plecs in the other). Put the lids on. Bundle the
buckets up with towels, heavy overcoats, or most anything that will keep them
insulated. They will be happy like that all day long. Every few hours you might
decide to lift the lid to let some fresh air get in, but otherwise leave the
fish be. Remember, when transporting fish the key things are to stop them
getting chilled and to keep them supplied with oxygen. Beyond that, they're
quite easy to transport, otherwise the whole tropical fish exporting business
wouldn't be viable! Hope this helps, Neale.>
