Arrgghh. Yeah Clown Goby’s are a huge pain in the but to get eating. I’ve gone through three greens, a Citron, and now a yellow. One of the greens ate fine immediately and was happy for months but died with an unfortunate salinity swing. The Citron and other two greens wouldn’t eat and succumbed after less than a week.
My current yellow is tiny, seems to have a pretty emaciated and sunken belly and isn’t super active. Tends to cling to the back wall and move around occasionally. Doesn’t seem interested in food much at all.
I reached out to the online shop I bought him from and asked what they were feeding. A mix of baby brine, mysid and lobster eggs. I tried and it didn’t get a huge response from him.
Currently I’m mixing tiny amounts of different stuff and using a pipette to gently squirt some right at him, and doing this 3 or 4 times a day. I’m trying frozen brine, mysid, black worms, lobster eggs or rotifers. Give a little bit of one, then a bit of something else a few hours later. I’m also mixing batches of a couple of different ones and trying that occasionally.
I’m hatching baby brine shrimp every couple of days and squirting some of those right at him, hoping that the movement will attract his attention.
5 days in and he’s still alive. I think he may have grabbed the occasional morsel when I fed him (hard to tell because he stays at the back behind the rock) but really can’t tell.
I’ve got some Seachem Garlic Guard coming today that I’m going to try - garlics supposed to make food more tempting and trigger a feeding response.
I dosed a fresh batch of Copepods the same day he arrived so there should be some tiny critters in there he can eat if he’s tempted by those.
Clown Gobies are awesome little fish and they’re one of a very few fish that are suitable for small Pico tanks so I keep trying them but it’s saddening. The purple firefish in the same tank also got off to a slow start but after three weeks he’s happy and feeding well. Keep hoping the Clown Goby will learn good habits from the firefish.
