Nikko
Active Member
This has been really bugging me the last few days and i'd like to get any feedback from persons who have experience in keeping blue-spotted jawfish. I am aware of the difficulty in keeping them from reading thoroughly and watching videos. I tried to do everything right, and my only regrets is not having more rubble in my DT for him to make his burrow and maybe quarantining him in the tank with a partition. I kept this guy in QT for over 3 weeks with two pink bar gobies. Very friendly, they all got along. He would always be out ready to be fed, and ate readily. I moved him into my tank and the large mata (sp?) tang I had was spazzing out and I ended up moving the tang into my QT since he is so hyper and stressed the other fish out. I plan on giving him to my LFS but they currently don't have any tanks with compatible fish. I feel bad, but he was stressing out ALL the fish.
The jawfish seems happy when I put him in DT. But then the flame-fin (Tomini) tank, who became a small jerk after the mata tang was sent away, started messing with the jawfish quite a bit. The jawfish would recede into the small burrow he made, and came back out, but they went at it quite a bit that day. The tang doesn't have that little spike that most tangs have so I don't imagine that much physical damage, if any at all, was caused by the tang. At night, the jawfish came out and I tried to feed him, but he spit it out. Granted, I always put garlic and amino acids on his food before, and I fed the hell out of him that day just to make sure all was well.
The next morning he disappeared and placed one of the frag plates I had into the entrance of the burrow. I haven't seen him for two days now... I am POSITIVE he didn't jump. I learned that lesson the hard way in the past and did a DIY cover with only the feed hole exposed, and that was completely covered.
I'm not sure if a hardy jawfish can be stressed to the point of death when dealing with an aggressive tank mate. He was very healthy and eating, even during the day he was battling with the tang. I really want to believe he is just going into hide mode and building his burrow, but I get nervous because I see a pistol shrimp, who is a known scavenger, in an area I don't normally see him, and without his YW goby at his side. So.... What do you think? Dead from stress? Hiding and building a burrow? He was very hardy but they did go at it pretty good and I know he was stressed. I worry about how long he could go without eating.... Its been two and a half days now. I have a large tank (215 gallons) so there are a lot of places to go.
Give it to me straight, what do you think? I don't want to think the worst, but that's where i'm at... Am I being a worry wart and overreacting? And I know all fish are different with different health and stress thresholds. Any thoughts would be appreciated!
The jawfish seems happy when I put him in DT. But then the flame-fin (Tomini) tank, who became a small jerk after the mata tang was sent away, started messing with the jawfish quite a bit. The jawfish would recede into the small burrow he made, and came back out, but they went at it quite a bit that day. The tang doesn't have that little spike that most tangs have so I don't imagine that much physical damage, if any at all, was caused by the tang. At night, the jawfish came out and I tried to feed him, but he spit it out. Granted, I always put garlic and amino acids on his food before, and I fed the hell out of him that day just to make sure all was well.
The next morning he disappeared and placed one of the frag plates I had into the entrance of the burrow. I haven't seen him for two days now... I am POSITIVE he didn't jump. I learned that lesson the hard way in the past and did a DIY cover with only the feed hole exposed, and that was completely covered.
I'm not sure if a hardy jawfish can be stressed to the point of death when dealing with an aggressive tank mate. He was very healthy and eating, even during the day he was battling with the tang. I really want to believe he is just going into hide mode and building his burrow, but I get nervous because I see a pistol shrimp, who is a known scavenger, in an area I don't normally see him, and without his YW goby at his side. So.... What do you think? Dead from stress? Hiding and building a burrow? He was very hardy but they did go at it pretty good and I know he was stressed. I worry about how long he could go without eating.... Its been two and a half days now. I have a large tank (215 gallons) so there are a lot of places to go.
Give it to me straight, what do you think? I don't want to think the worst, but that's where i'm at... Am I being a worry wart and overreacting? And I know all fish are different with different health and stress thresholds. Any thoughts would be appreciated!
