Experience with engineer goby (Pholidichthys leucotaenia)

[chemicals]

Hi all!

My lfs has some juvenile engineer gobies and I did some reading and would like to get a pair of them. I wanted to see how some of y’all experience these fish, are you happy with them or did you wish you never got them. I have most of my rocks sitting on the glass so I’m afraid that they won’t be able to get enough of tunnel system going (I have added a picture of my scape). Besides that, I have pretty fine sand so if they burry a tunnel it will collapse immediatly. Is that something to worry about? The tank is a 4ft ~100gal waterbox.

Thanks!

 

[Brandont21]

I had one in my 55 gal. They get big fast. Any corals near sand will get buried. Mine had tunnels all over, as thats where they live

 

[Dicey1]

I have 3 and they don’t have to go under the rocks. They will pile the sand up outside the rocks to make burrows between them and they don’t care what they cover up. I love watching mine but I don’t have anything on the sand bed to worry about

 

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

I have a single engineer goby as it is the only one I have seen come through the LFS, he was a little guy in de ember when I got him, but now he is nearly a foot long. When I grabbed him I only knew about the behaviors and wanted a sand stirrer. I did not know about their size or preferring schools.

Its a brilliant tunneler, and very friendly. He lets my mandarin and firefish sleep in his tunnels, and I am pretty sure he not only cleans his poop out of the tunnels, but the other fishes poops.

I never wanted an eel like animal, and if it was large enough for me to realize that's what they looked like I might have passed on him, but he is one of my favorites. Once in a while it comes all the way out and joins the mixed school of clowns and chromis and firefish. He's become my favorite part of feeding time, watching him extend out to grab food one piece at a time.

One thing it doesn't like is snails, everytime I see a cerith or nassarius going in he picks them up and moves them away, and if he keeps dropping them on a hill where they roll back in he gets this grumpy look on his face until he figured out to drop them somewhere else.

Lots of fun, has been a bennefit to my other fish, and if I see another, I might get it so long as it will accept another engineer goby so he isn't so lonely.

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

I think these (as with most sand sifting gobies) are cool, but you have to understand that they will bury anything on the sand bed. No corals or anything else will be safe there if you get one. Might be worth it to you, but you definitely need to know that once they're in, they OWN the sand bed.