Emaciated Goby

[pulpfiction]

My yellow clown goby looks emaciated. I'm not sure its eating. It grabs food and spits it out. It's so small its hard to tell if the fish is eating. I add a half cube of either mysis, brine, or marine cuisine a day. I have tried pellets but it wont eat those. I have had it in the tank for about a month. Should I be feeding more or something different? My other fish are fat and happy.

The goby has already been treated for parasites with prazipro and metronidazole.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

That's really unfortunate. I hate watching a fish die. I'm going to keep trying different foods from what has been suggested here and hope for the best. Thank you for the best wishes.

Just to add another “downer” to this thread: these fish live/hide in coral. They are really low value. Catching one in a net to sell it for perhaps 15 cents isn’t worth the huge amount of time it would take, so they are caught with cyanide. This in turn, if they got hit too hard, can cause malabsorption problems with food later on.

Jay

 

[pulpfiction]

Just to add another “downer” to this thread: these fish live/hide in coral. They are really low value. Catching one in a net to sell it for perhaps 15 cents isn’t worth the huge amount of time it would take, so they are caught with cyanide. This in turn, if they got hit too hard, can cause malabsorption problems with food later on.

Jay

Jesus...

 

[JayFish4004]

That's really unfortunate. I hate watching a fish die. I'm going to keep trying different foods from what has been suggested here and hope for the best. Thank you for the best wishes.

Yeah its super hard to watch

Jesus...

happy reefing from the good news bears! Lol sorry man but if it were me I’d like to know this early on - I didn’t have that luxury and went through a lot of heartache in the process. Clown gobies are my favorite alltime species, hoping one day someone like @Biota_Marine can captive-breed these little badasses instead of them having to go through this

 

[pulpfiction]

Yeah its super hard to watch

happy reefing from the good news bears! Lol sorry man but if it were me I’d like to know this early on - I didn’t have that luxury and went through a lot of heartache in the process. Clown gobies are my favorite alltime species, hoping one day someone like @Biota_Marine can captive-breed these little badasses instead of them having to go through this

Same. I had never even heard about cyanide fishing. I don't have high hopes for the goby. It was a bit skinny when I got it and it has only gotten worse. That would be cool if more captive bred ones became available. Clown gobies are awesome fish.

 

[pulpfiction]

I fed a bit of rods this morning and the goby happily attacked it. The goby will only go after chunks that are bigger than its mouth. But it looked like the goby was eating before too...

 

[Biota_Marine]

Yeah its super hard to watch

happy reefing from the good news bears! Lol sorry man but if it were me I’d like to know this early on - I didn’t have that luxury and went through a lot of heartache in the process. Clown gobies are my favorite alltime species, hoping one day someone like @Biota_Marine can captive-breed these little badasses instead of them having to go through this

We have other species of tiny nano gobies but unfortunately I don't think we'll be doing the clown gobies. Proaquatix had some luck with them back in 2015 but didn't continue because the demand wasn't really there for the cost of production. Like with what Jay said above it being a 15 cent fish to catch makes it incredibly hard for breeders to charge what it costs to produce that fish. We see it all the time with our mandarin and yellow tang pricing

 

[JayFish4004]

I fed a bit of rods this morning and the goby happily attacked it. The goby will only go after chunks that are bigger than its mouth. But it looked like the goby was eating before too...

Just keep trying thats all you can do - the one I got before my current one started eating frozen baby brine and can o’cyclops but it seemed too little too late as it continued to get skinnier and skinnier until he passed