Dragon Gobi

[tylerperkins]

Or you got lucky and he hasn't died yet.

Dragon Gobies thrive in brackish.. they can live in FW but not a full life. And there is no way they are eating ghost shrimp. For starters their throat is way to small. Secondly they have horrible eyesight, they are basically blind. They use smell and sifting through sand to get their food. They could eat flake food but once it settles to the bottom and they stumble upon it.

well yet again mine eats ghost shrimp weather you believe me or not and he dosent wait for flake to hit the bottom he catches it and hes well over a year and doing fine in fw hes 3x the size he was when i got him so dispite your highly educated degree in dragon gobies ur still wrong

 

[davo]

Hate to argue.. but this is bad info.

Dragon Gobies have big mouths but tiny throats. They cannot eat fish no matter what anyone says. Prawns could be fed up if they were cut up into very small pieces.

They will eat blood worms and any other type of pellet / algae wafer that will break up into small pieces as it gets wet. I kept Dragon Gobies for over 2 years in a brackish tank with a salinity of 1.010, I then decided to go in a different direction with my tanks.

And the largest specimen I've seen in home aquaria was 27" at about 7 years old I believe so they get much larger then 12".. all of mine were over 12".

That's funny, they've eaten some of the flying foxes before...

Yes they do go for smaller food sizes, like I said, filter through sand, that is why things such as bloodworms like you mentioned are pretty good. However they have always done fine on prawn for me, I don't know what size prawns people use, but of course are cut up so the fish can eat them, that is common sense. They are good to start with, because when they come in they are often so thin, I use it to beef them up. Tyler you should really have it in a brackish tank, just because it is surviving doesn't mean it is thriving.

 

[Dragon cqzzzzz<]

Tyler, fresh is not the way to go. Mine did just fine for over a year in freshwater, until I wised up and changed it to brackish.
They can go for very long periods of time in fresh, but they become more susceptible to diseases, such as the dreaded red tumors that spread all over the fish's body until it dies. Do you want that to happen to your fish?
They live in estuaries. Estuaries are brackish. You wouldn't put a saltwater fish in fresh, so why a brackish one? I think if you care about the fish's health and aren't an ignorant person, you'll make the switch.
How large is your goby now? I'm interested in their growth rates. You say you've had yours for a year, and the longest I've heard them grow to in a year was 12". Well actually 20" but Clare was using a special diet. That thing was HUGE.

 

[tylerperkins]

well hes been in fresh for over a year and hes over 12" last time i measured him he was almost 14" trust me if he was gonna get sick he would have by now had some problems with bad feeders and sick fish and this guy is a champ never looked bad or got sluggish once

 

[Dragon cqzzzzz<]

You're not getting it. Let me explain it to you at the cellular level. Your goby's cells have to work to keep what's called osmotic pressure under control. The cells of freshwater fish permit very little salt. When salt enters the cells, they use energy to restore it to what it's supposed to be. That energy should be going to things like the immune system. The same goes for brackish fish. A salinity higher or lower, is harmful. Violet gobies are very adaptable but that eventually does catch up on them. The weakened immune system cannot fight off disease, and the fish dies.
Like I said, mine was in fresh for over a year, no problems. That means nothing. Just ask Pufferpunk. His goby was in fresh for a long time but then it got those red tumors and died. I've never heard of the red tumors occurring in brackish water.
It sounds like you're taking good care of the goby (except for the fact that it's in freshwater). If you switch now, I'm sure it will live a long healthy life. Otherwise, it will probably become sick and die. Maybe not today, maybe not this year, but someday it will happen.
This isn't something that's up for debate. Naomi Delventhal (a real goby expert) said so herself. You don't put a saltwater fish in fresh, and you don't put a brackish fish in fresh. How hard is that to understand?

 

[Mudfrog]

Have you two actually witnessed them eating one? Not just putting it in their mouth but swallowing them? Have you seen the size of their throats? They are tiny.

I've done a ton of research and kept these guys for almost 3 years, like I said there are always exceptions but just because you get lucky keeping a BW fish in FW does not mean you should flood the boards making new people think it is ok as well.

Read Pufferpunks article on wetwebmedia.. She has a lot of very useful and accurate information.

 

[tylerperkins]

i never said it was ok i just said i had one that was fine and yes i have seen mine eat many ghost shrimp

 

[Dragon cqzzzzz<]

OK Tyler. Please give your goby a brackish home. I understand what it's like to have a violet goby in freshwater, not sure which way to go. Someone once told me that I didn't care about my goby. That insulted me. I was just doing what I thought was OK for the fish. Now I know better. In freshwater, the goby's time is limited, and some opportunistic pathogen or something is bound to come in and destroy the fish.
The violet goby's tolerance is both a blessing and a curse. Although it helps them survive long periods of time in varying salinities, it misleads people into believing that it will tolerate freshwater for its entire lifetime.

 

[tylerperkins]

i do love your concern for my fish but like i just said hes my fish and i check on him every day and every night and every time i look at hime he has his lovely blue gold color and is hanging out in the sand never once has he ever gotten the dreded slimy look of a sick or malnurished dragon but hey i know that if you take your love of destroying peoples love of the hoby to wal-mart you could make your ego feel like superman

i didnt buy a goby for the fun of it i bought it cause i did the research and talked to lfs before buying one


now i know your gonna say "you must not have if you have him in fw"

well if you think you know everything from reading one web site fine good for you but the net has millions of pages of info read a little more

now i think its time you lay off my fish cause the starter of this thread was looking for input and i gave him that i didnt put in my .02 for some other know it all to tell me im wrong

 

[FalconKeeper]

Wow Tyler I'm glad you're here to prove everyone else wrong. What would we do without you? Let me know when your DG dies. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.