yellow watchman goby behavior

tailoftwogobies · Apr 18, 2021

hi y’all! we still have our pair of yellow watchman gobies with their tiger pistol shrimp.. all is wonderful in the tank & the new stand is coming along great.. this evening both watchman gobies are behaving erratically & swimming around leaving their burrow and their shrimp, this never has happened before.. BUT one goby (smaller one) is turning almost in bold stripes vertically yellow and a dark color.. the bigger watchman is the normal yellow color but.. all of the sudden there is a belly on that one, not a bloat from feeding this is a little belly.. could our watchmans be pregnant? also.. we have a small ‘quarantine’ tank in our tank right now with a tiny wheeler goby and a tiny yellow watchman (they are in harmony with a rock and sand and no other fish can get to them) could this possibly be stressing our gobies out? water in the tank is reading great.. and all corals seem happy as well.. so any suggestions would be amazing! thanks y’all!! i’ve asked questions regarding breeding the watchman and i have yet to get many answers on how to ‘sex’ them.. so again all suggestions and criticism are welcomed!!!

KingTideCorals · Apr 19, 2021

tailoftwogobies said:
hi y’all! we still have our pair of yellow watchman gobies with their tiger pistol shrimp.. all is wonderful in the tank & the new stand is coming along great.. this evening both watchman gobies are behaving erratically & swimming around leaving their burrow and their shrimp, this never has happened before.. BUT one goby (smaller one) is turning almost in bold stripes vertically yellow and a dark color.. the bigger watchman is the normal yellow color but.. all of the sudden there is a belly on that one, not a bloat from feeding this is a little belly.. could our watchmans be pregnant? also.. we have a small ‘quarantine’ tank in our tank right now with a tiny wheeler goby and a tiny yellow watchman (they are in harmony with a rock and sand and no other fish can get to them) could this possibly be stressing our gobies out? water in the tank is reading great.. and all corals seem happy as well.. so any suggestions would be amazing! thanks y’all!! i’ve asked questions regarding breeding the watchman and i have yet to get many answers on how to ‘sex’ them.. so again all suggestions and criticism are welcomed!!!

There is a total possibility of them getting ready to lay eggs and have babies! Totally possible!

I would be weary on adding the other watchmen to the tank if you have on in QT because you do not want to throw off the harmony of the couple already, and especially if they are getting ready to make some fry! Good luck, and keep the thread updated be interested to hear how things turn out!

tailoftwogobies · Apr 20, 2021

okay, so they are back to normal.. I think the quarantine tank reflection was possibly bothering them, we've never put any thing like that in the tank before. the one goby still has the strange color change but both are acting normal again. do you know if they do happen to lay eggs will the tiger pistol they are paired with will that shrimp bother the eggs or do they by instinct know to leave the eggs alone? thank you again for the advice.

reefinatl · May 8, 2021

tailoftwogobies said:
hi y’all! we still have our pair of yellow watchman gobies with their tiger pistol shrimp.. all is wonderful in the tank & the new stand is coming along great.. this evening both watchman gobies are behaving erratically & swimming around leaving their burrow and their shrimp, this never has happened before.. BUT one goby (smaller one) is turning almost in bold stripes vertically yellow and a dark color.. the bigger watchman is the normal yellow color but.. all of the sudden there is a belly on that one, not a bloat from feeding this is a little belly.. could our watchmans be pregnant? also.. we have a small ‘quarantine’ tank in our tank right now with a tiny wheeler goby and a tiny yellow watchman (they are in harmony with a rock and sand and no other fish can get to them) could this possibly be stressing our gobies out? water in the tank is reading great.. and all corals seem happy as well.. so any suggestions would be amazing! thanks y’all!! i’ve asked questions regarding breeding the watchman and i have yet to get many answers on how to ‘sex’ them.. so again all suggestions and criticism are welcomed!!!

I have two, both CB from ORA when purchased bot were a grey color. After a couple of months turned fairly bright yellow, the other is very grey with dark vertical bands. I really don't think one is even aware if the other. They are in a 90g and one has made a home at the far right, the other at the far left.