Trying to feed my skinny yasha goby

[lba4590]

Hi! I need some help with figuring out how to feed my yasha goby. He was MIA for a while and I thought he had died.. well, now he’s always out but he’s a skinny little guy. He won’t venture far from his holes, pretty much just body length and darts back in. I’ve tried target feeding with a turkey baster and occasionally this works, but lately he sees me coming over to tank and darts back in his hole. If not that, he freaks out when I try to put some food near him. I’m worried he’s not getting enough food. The only thing I’ve really gotten him to eat is frozen plankton and maybe a little brine shrimp. Any ideas?

 

[ichthyogeek]

Maybe try hatching out baby brine shrimp to feed it? If possible, hatching them for 48 hours, and adding in algae like phytofeast, oceanmagik, or spirulina powder for the last 4 hours would be best, since it gives them time to mature a bit more and get some more meat on their shells, while gut loading them with phytoplankton will increase their nutritional value. When you add it into the tank, make sure to squirt the BBS near its hole, and turn off the pumps

How big is your tank?

 

[lba4590]

Maybe try hatching out baby brine shrimp to feed it? If possible, hatching them for 48 hours, and adding in algae like phytofeast, oceanmagik, or spirulina powder for the last 4 hours would be best, since it gives them time to mature a bit more and get some more meat on their shells, while gut loading them with phytoplankton will increase their nutritional value. When you add it into the tank, make sure to squirt the BBS near its hole, and turn off the pumps

How big is your tank?

Thank you! Do I need a lot of space to do that? Definitely happy to hatch some if that will help! How long do they live if I feed them? I don’t have many fish, so bioload is really low and I don’t feed a ton. I was planning to start a pod population ASAP as well since I don’t have fish that will really go after them. I have a 120g so it’s hard to feed a small amount and let the goby get a chance to eat.

 

[ichthyogeek]

i wouldn't say you need a lot of space. Just a spare air pump, a light if you really want it, and an empty 2L bottle (for some reason, I get the best results out of the 2L Coke bottles). There are....maybe 50000 tutorials on how to make a hatchery, so there's a lot of resources for you to search up, stuff like "how to make brine shrimp hatchery" and "how to hatch brine shrimp."

They're saltwater organisms (well, really, they thrive in extreme haline environments, but they're also happy in saltwater, but yeah). They'll live as long as they don't get eaten, get enough food to eat, and aren't shredded by pumps.

Just turn the overflow pump off, and leave the rest of your pumps going, then add in the hatched BBS. It'll basically become a plankton "storm" that your yasha can pick and choose from until you decide that enough is enough and turn the pumps back on.

 

[Nick428]

I've had small gobies before the only food i recall them eating was arctic cyclopeeze (which was the best single food ever) its hard to find now but there are a few alternative species in freeze dried and frozen. I think san fransico bay and brineshrimp direct make their own.