lazy dragon / brown-barred Goby

My goby was an excellent sand sifter constantly turning it over and only paying a passing mind to the shrimp I was feeding the clowns every other day. It decided to partake one feeding and I think it's like fish crack because it won't go back to sifting sand and just hangs out with the two clowns and the wrasse waiting on shrimp.

I don't know this officially but by virtue of the goby losing some weight makes me think that it needs more volume and frequency of feeding than the other three so I've taken to trying to spot feed it daily.

Have any of you experienced an unmotivated sand sifter? My first thought was that it wasn't getting enough nutrients from the sand but it was actually healthier looking when it was more active in the sand bed.

And it bit me on the finger when I was trying to spot feed a coral (it associated the syringe with the shrimp) that smarted more than I expected it to. I jumped like I had been hit with a cattle prod.

 

Try some sinking pellets that way there maybe some in the sandbed for him to dine on. Pretty much besides that all you can do is offer foods like mysis and such and hope he is getting some of the left overs.

Good luck

 

I don't have to hope much that he gets some left overs because he's up there at the top out-muscling the others to get his share.

 

You can try and squirt some of the shrimp into the sandbed that way he can start associating shrimp with the sand bed and not just the water column. Then maybe he will start sifting the sand again knowing that there might be shrimp in it. Just an idea.

 

+1 anpgp. Fish like things to be repetitive. If the food is floating around the water everytime then he's going to go to the water every time. Put shrimp in the sand in front of his home and see if that will get him to sift. You'll have to keep doing this though or he will go back to getting food like everyone else.

 

I'll give that a try. Thanks guys.

I will admit the upside to this is that the corals aren't constantly covered in sand anymore.

 

Yeah, but wait until your sand bed doesn't look sparkly clean then you'll wish he was back to sifting. I felt the same way.