Well first let me give every one a breif summary about this fish:

Common Name:Yasha Hashe Goby, Yashia Goby, Yasha Haze Goby

Scientific Name:Strongobiops Yasha (Please correct me if I'm wrong)

Minimum Tank Size:5gal. must have a tight lid as they will jump (I've kept my pair for over a year in a 5gal. pico but would only recomend one in a 5gal.)

Diet: Carmivore, but foods with spirulia algae will greatly benifit

Temperment: Peaceful but will hold it's own against most fish

Tankmates: Any fish but Dotybacks, territorial Blennies, other burrowers, or fish that may consume them

Symbiotic Relationships: Will pair with most Pistol Shrimp

Now, left me see yours then I'll show you mine. But if you don't want to wait just look at my tank thread.

Edit: Keep in mind this is my personal experience and some may dissagree with me.

Great thread bro... Hopefully soon, I'll be able to add some of my own!!!

excellent thread idea Can't wait to add mine. I don't know why I just think these are really classy fish

I love the yashia as well. Actually, I am a huge Goby nut altogether:

Nice pics Seed can't wait to see yours Brian and David. I agree with you Brian on your statement, they are really elegant looking with the opague patteren on the dorsal fin and how long and flowing the dorsal fin is.

do they clean the sand?

No, but if you pair them with a pistol shrimp the pistol will.

only their spot right? not the whole tank lol

Yeah only their spot mine cleans about six inchens in all dierections from the burrow and thats it. But I have quite a bit of rocks so there isn't much exposed sand so he get's most of it.


Edit: Just saw the new pic of yours Seed and it shows all of their brilliant colors!

If any of you have shells lying around, crush them up and put them buy your gobies hole, I did that yesterday and the shrimp moved them around and made a door, today I got to see him close it for the night. it was really cool.

i want one of these little guys, i think they are so cute!!

Then get one my pair only costed me $90 then the shrimp was $21.

Hey bro, did you buy them online, or at your LFS? You may have already said this... Oh well!

Come on more people than seed and I have these guys. Trust me I know!

Will be getting mine in a few weeks when a local reefer does a fish run. Will post pics here when I do. Promise.

Lfs, I read some where that when the fish are equal size the one with a smaller fin is the female, I had one that was about 2in. long and a few weeks after I got him my lfs got a bunch more of them in they had one about the same size with a smaller fin and lucky me it turned out to be the opposite sex because the haven't killed eachother in the two years I've had them. Can't wait to see yours civic!

Forgot to add, anyone who's getting one and a pistol do not put any frags with in a 8" radius of the burrow or the pistol will move them or just plain burry them. I don't know if anyone else has this problem but mine used to do it until I moved everything into the rock work.

Here are some more pics of my pair and pistol!

how much are they?

Most of my lfss sell them for around $40 a piece I got my pair for $90 and the shrimp was $21.

As a bit of trivia, these fishes were originally available as an undescribe species with the unofficial name Yashia Haze. Haze being a japanese word, I think for goby? Anyway, this is a bold shrimp goby, which I actually think benefits from not having a symbiotic shrimp. It restricts them, a lot more, to a single area of the tank.

The only more awesome Stonogobiops spp. is S. dracula. I <3 Yashas

Thanks for the info nips and they are bold. One will attack my clowns then the other will take the mysis right out of their mouth! They also seem to have taught my lubbock's fairy wrasse to do the same. I don't know if I can agree with you on the shrimp statement as i love to watch them interact with the shrimp, he even cleans the gobies as a cleaner shrimp would!

no luck finding one today they all told me they were rare to find and when they are found people usually take them all :/

Yep they're exactly right, I got mine the day the lfs got them and went back 3 days later to get water for a water change and all five were gone.

They are bold? Does it take a while for them to loosen up after being brought home? I have had mine for about 10 days and I haven't seen more than the tip of his mouth since I dropped him in. He never ventures out the tunnels the pistol made for them.

I just pooled a late night sneak attack and was able to capture the Goby outside his den!




It's a crappy night shot... but I was excited to see him out!

Nice shot cuban, they will be shy for a week to a month then they will come out regularly. As in bold I mean that they'll stick up for themselves and in my experience are VERY territorial. I'm suprised that niether of my clowns have any wounds from being bitten by my Yashas so many times. A few months ago I purchased this beautiful indo-acan echinata (you can see it in all my goby pics) and at first the were scared of it (it's the size of my hand) then the swam up toit with their muth's wide open as if saying get the hell of my turf! Now they will just perch on it, it doesn't bother the coral as i can see but my female Yasha Hashe has a black dot on her right gill. I belive it's from the coral stinging her, much like a clown when it begins to host corals.

i already have a yellow watchman in my 20long..can i still keep a yasha in there too? my watchman thinks the whole tank is his...

No, one or the other will eventionally get eaten and two pistol won't get along.

Don't be afraid to post pics!

Well my lfs just got two in today i really wanted to get one for my mom's ap12 but she didn't want one, she said that she can just look at mine. I really want another pair!!!!!!!!!!! btw it was $80 for a pair and $40 for them singly!

My LFS can order them for $50 a pair, best price I've seen anywhere. I picked them up, and they're currently AWOL digging out tunnels under my rock. Or at least the pistol is. I have no idea where the goby went. The pistol suddenly jumped out of his cave today, swam a couple laps around the tank, excavated a random chunk of coral, then disappeared back into the rockwork. I have this idea that the shrimp is trying to woo the goby, since I got them at different times and the goby so far hasn't hung out with the shrimp.

They're totally baffling.

Why do you get them with a pistol shrimp?

they will form a symbiotic relationship and you see some awesome behaviour from both of them!

It's actually a mutualistic relationship, to be a bit more pedantic. There's an interesting wikipedia article on the subject of Symbiosis. In the case of the Yashia and the Pistol Shrimp, both of them really benefit from the relationship. The Goby gets a tunnel engineer, and the Pistol gets someone to watch out for it (it's pretty much blind). It's not obligate, though. Each can get along without the other. An example of obligate mutualism, per the wiki article, is the tube worms which live on the ocean floor near thermal vents. They lack a digestive tract and rely on bacteria to break down the hydrogen sulfide or methane which comes from the vent.

We humans also have a huge population of symbiotic bacteria which live in our large intestine and produce Vitamin K for us. The bacteria in the large intestine outnumber all the other cells in the human body.

I had a pair a while back...yasha goby with randalls pistol but sold them when I tore the tank down.






I have gotten another Yash/pistol but the randalls pistol has yellow legs....they have burrowed in the back so no pictures of them yet.

Great pics EK, and thanks for bringing this thread back. I'll have to get a new pic of my pair. (acidentally deleted all my pics from photobucket!)

No prob!

When it came to getting new fish the Yasha/Randalls combo is hard to beat! So I went ahead and got another pair but pictures will be hard to come by till they get moved into their new home.

Yeah they're by far my favorite fish, I used to just look on here for info and to stare at Junkitu's tank. I saw that he had one and I said to myself "I have to get one of those!" So after having numerous lfs try to get me one I went into the lfs for more fish food when I saw writen on the tank Yasha Goby $45. i was like no way in hell he's still in there, turns out yep I snatched him up. Three weeks later the lfs got like five more in and I loved them so much i had to get another. Turns out they paired up and are inseprable! I'm having a bit of an aiptasia problem at the moment and have corals scattered on the sand bed so the don't get stung. But my peppermint shrimp is doing a good job and as soon as he takes these last few out and everything is back to normal I'll have pics up of mine.

I wanna try and pair mine up as well but that will have to wait till they are moved to their new tank.

You should you see much different behaviour. I also want ANOTHER pair! I can't get enough of these guys, and to make it worse my lfs has a pair their selling for $80 but I've got no where to put them,even though there are 4 tanks in my house.

Live aquaria in the Divers Den section has a pair in for about $130 bucks. I'm tempted, but I have a blue spot jawfish and he does have a burrow. Don't know if I can keep these with the BSJF!

Just got an email from Liveaquaria.com, weekly special Yashia White Ray Shrimp Goby 50% off!! Only $34.99 a piece!!

well i dont have a pair, i was plannin on gitin a randalls goby and randalls shrimp, i think ill change the goby to the yasha hasha! first i need to come up with the money! i originally was just readin this thread to learn a bit about the fish and to pass time......i think i might git one of these instead! but first anyone got some good links to look thru that i can do some reasearch on about these little dudes?

Google.....yashia/yasha

Here's a pic of my yasha/pistol pair. They've built quite an extensive tunnel system underneath my largest rock in my ADA nano.

Is it Yasha or Yashia? I also see Yasha Haze or Yasha Hashe. Can we get a definite common name nailed down here please! I vote for "Yashia Goby" with no "Hashe or Haze". Agreed?

I like Yashia Haze.


Went to try and take pictures of mine and found that the two had built a really extensive tunnel below the whole rockpile of my tank! Also found that the opening that they frequent most is deep in the center of the rockpile and there is my blood fire shrimp was chilling outside the door!

I think it is a Japanese name. I prefer Yasha goby. The scientific name is "Stonogobiops yasha" (from fishbase.org). The reference they give is:

Yoshino, T. and K. Shimada, 2001. Stonogobiops yasha, a new shrimp-associated goby from Japan. Ichthyol. Res. 48(4):405-408.

Interesting. LiveAquaria says the scientific name is Stonogobiops yashia. The Marine Fishes book says it's Stonogobiops sp. (p.356)