How to pair up goby and pistol shrimp?

lbear

lbear

AC Members
Sep 14, 2005
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Bay area, California
I got a 3" Randall's prawn goby (Orange Stripe Prawn Goby) yesterday from a local reefer. Everything looks fine so far. I'd like to getting a pistol shrimp and hope they could pair up. What kind of pistol shrimp should I get? Any tips of putting them together? My tank is 90 gal FOWLR currently with a pair of O.clown, one royal gramma and the goby.

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IMO they are going to go where they want to go. you hope they find each other, but theres no guarantee. i have had a yellow watchman goby for about 8 mths and i have a tiger pistol shrimp coming today.

when i'm done accl. i will release him on the side of the tank where my goby hangs out and hope for best.
 
I got my order of pistol shrimp today. After 2 hours of drip acclimation, I drop it to the place where the goby stays. The pistol shrimp looks pretty cool. It have two big eye patterns on white body and blue claws.

It swims toward to a cave and has tail point outward which makes it look like a Randall's goby! After 20 minutes or so I found the shrimp STAT IN THE SAME CAVE of the goby!!!

Hopefully they still share the same place when I got home.
 
i hope they stay friends, too, and don't have some kind of "domestic dispute". in the wild, they must have some way of finding each other, despite miles of habitat. so they've got some way to do it. glad to hear the two paired up so easily :)
 
Im going to sound completely ignorant BUT, what do you guys mean Pair ? The shrimp Pairs up with the goby as in??????? one cleans the other ? im confused :huh:
 
it doesn't mean they "pair up" as in romantically :) I think that would hurt, ew.

in the wild, many such goby-shrimp symbioses occur with many different species. "symbiosis" that means they help each other out. the shrimp does the housework by maintaining the burrow and the goby is on the watch-out for predators or other risks. the shrimps have poor vision and will always keep an antenna on their "roommate". whenever it feels the goby dart back into the burrow in a hurry, it gets the clue and heads back, too. either species (goby or shrimp) can exist alone, but they prefer such relationships if they can find one.

cleaning is another form of symbiosis, so you weren't too far off :)

by the way, clos10 i like your avatar. i thought about using a pic of me, too, but was too shy. and don't worry about sounding dumb, we all gotta learn somehow.
 
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haha well you shouldnt be shy!! Who cares, its kind of odd replying and reading all these posts and not knowing what people look like. So monterey bay huh? I was just at the aquarium a month ago its awesome, I live in the North Bay area
 
My goby and shrimp paired up successfully! Most of the time the shrimp stays inside the cave and goby stays half body outside. Sometimes they get out together. But they are still very shy. I haven't had chance to get a picture of them.

I drop formula one cube close to their cave. The shrimp rushs out grabbing it back to their cave. I can see them sharing food. It's so amazing.
 
lbear said:
I drop formula one cube close to their cave. The shrimp rushs out grabbing it back to their cave. I can see them sharing food. It's so amazing.
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that's awesome... domestic bliss :)
 
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