When will engineers stop being shy?

[Alpha_and_Gec]

My local public aquarium has a ton of fully mature engineer gobies in a tank together, and they are extremely active, swimming very often across the front glass. However, my own engi is rather shy, only peeking his head out when I change the light colour, which seem to entice his interest. He’s healthy and readily feeding, just rather shy. Anyone else have bold engis? How did they become friendly?

 

[Gtinnel]

I’ve had 3 engineer gobies for probably about 3 years now and I only see them when I feed the tank.

I’d guess it probably has as much to do with their individual personalities and possibly environment more than their age.

 

[mfinn]

I started with 4 engineer gobies and over the course of 3-4 years it went down to 2.
They established a system of tunnels under the rockwork going from one side of the tank ( 180 gallon) to the other.
Once in a while during the day I would see one of them peeking out from under a rock, but I usually never saw them until feeding time.
It really surprised me how big they got, when I had to move them. Both were over 12" long.

 

[Alpha_and_Gec]

here’s the cool one… they have like 5 of them.

 

[TrottingReef]

never