Engineer Goby Slaughtered my BTA.

Clinton · Oct 23, 2017

How might one go about getting engineer gobies out of their tank? They've gone too far this time. They dig too deep move too much and now one decided to move from its original spot in my big rocks to a little rock which my BTA happened to be found of.
I came home today to find my engineer goby torn up a little bit and then bits and pieces of my BTA half buried in one spot and strewn about the rock in another. Wanting my tank to be a reef tank in the future I think it's time to get these 2 terds out of there, but the question I have is how?
And does anyone else find engineer gobies too destructive?

Tommy's Reef · Oct 23, 2017

They're destructive

Diesel · Oct 23, 2017

Fish trap or remove rocks and catch them.
Better do it now before it's a reef.

Tommy's Reef · Oct 23, 2017

Diesel said:
Fish trap or remove rocks and catch them.
Better do it now before it's a reef.

For sure remove him. Mine would pick up my crabs and bang them against the rocks, trying to get them out there shells. It was very wild. Almost like an eel! Awesome fish though if I had fowlr id of kept him!

Clinton · Oct 23, 2017

I'm thinking of just letting the little terd buckets go nuts in my sump

dylana407 · Oct 24, 2017

Maybe you can trade him in for store credit.

keddre · Oct 24, 2017

I ended up putting a divider in my tank and taking all the rocks out his side to get mine out. I had a similar problem as my pair used to enjoy burying their tankmates

jd371 · Oct 24, 2017

I'm so glad I passed on one of these, especially since I have the fine sugar type sand like you do. The only time I need to clean up is if my Melanurus decides to go to sleep next to some frags.