Target feeding sand-sifting goby - suggestions?

[ajmckay]

Hi all,

 

A little over a month ago I picked up a golden head sleeper goby - way cool fish. I don't even mind not having much of a fauna in the sand bed! I realize they can be a bit of a pain and I have taken the precautions for the most part to give it a large cave/burrow and corals are mostly off the sand.

 

Anyways, noticed he's not been able to gain weight so I want to get this thing eating better asap.

 

It goes for food when I feed, but not very aggressively so it really does rely on going through the substrate to find sustenance. So what suggestions do people have to keep these guys well fed?

 

I'm looking at either some sinking pellets, some omega 1 gel cubes cut up into bigger chunks, or possibly some fresh seafood like a scallop or shrimp cut into chunks large enough that the other fish can't steal them on their way to the bottom.

 

Tank is a 40b and inhabitants are solar wrasse, occellaris clown, sixline, banggai cardinal, and yellowtail blue damsel. My normal feeding routine is about 1/3 to 1/2 cube each hikari mysis (small kind) and hikari mega marine cube.

[ajmckay]

Update... fish died... Never gained mass.

 

Apparently what I did wasn't enough. Here's how I modified my feeding regimen:

 

1) Added larger chunks of scallop and shrimp to my feeding regimen.

2) Fed a lot daily - upped to about 1 cube daily.

3) Tried to feed earlier in the day but usually in the evening due to work.

4) turned pumps off while feeding so food sank faster.

5) Mixed in sinking NLS pellets, medium size.

 

A reminder to me that things can and do go wrong in this hobby that are either outside of our control or don't fit within our definition of what a reef tank is.

[lkoechle]

For future reference, before my diamond started swimming uo the water column to eat, I would turkey baste mysis in front of his cave while the other fish were eating and he would come out and scoop it up.

[RC1313]

I had a diamond goby that loved small pellet foods.. maybe an anomaly but just wanted to put that out there.

[ajmckay]

So the goby was actually out quite a bit - probably most of the tim ejust wasn't an aggressive feeder during feeding time but did constantly sift sand. That's why I started turning off the pumps, adding larger pieces of food (shrimp/scallop), sinking pellets, and overfeeding quite a bit... Note that tons of extra food hit the sand bed and my CUC is pretty slim - just 4 hermits and the rest are turbo snails who don't really hit up the sand much so it's not like other stuff got to the extra food before the goby had the opportunity to...

 

So it really is strange how despite all that it still died...

 

An interesting observation though that I should try to document and share: the overfeeding caused my fish (not the goby tho) to grow really quick. My ocellaris clown and yellow tail blue damsel experienced modest growth while my banggai cardinal and sixline wrasse experienced significant growth.

[MikeTR]

I had one that perished after about 6 months.. but tank was pretty new at the time. I actually thought he might have gone blind towards the end as food would hit him in the head and then would try to gobble it up after it floated away.