Freshwater, algae-eating goby....

J

joe schmoe

AC Members
Sep 20, 2000
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Freshwater, algae-eating goby (new pics and video)....

A somewhat local fish store had 3 of what looked to be algae eating gobies. They were slender with a goby-looking fin arrangement, and had a very large mouth...but the mouth was downturned and the "lips" looked like disproportionately large algae eating lips. The color pattern was dark silver with large, not very well defined brown spots/bands. They weren't labelled, and I would have asked had I thought there wouldn't be a language barrier, and that I would have gotten an accurate answer. Anyone have any idea what they are???

(no, it wasn't a Chinese Algae Eater :D )
 
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Knight gobies? They look like you've described, and are often sold as a FW fish, but are actually brackish.
 
There is a spot fin goby as well--what do you mean by adapted to eating algae? When I think of mouths adapted for algae eating, I think of loriicaids, or ancistrus, with the mouth located ventrally and with a large scraping 'tongue'.
 
Picture this....gobies have large mouths....imagine a thin goby, not as fat and squatty as a Knight Goby. The lips haven't fused into what I would call a sucker, but the lips are kind of rubbery...imagine something not quite totally a sucker. Before I recognized it as something different, one was cleaning the front glass. It didn't eat quite the same way a Pleco or Chinese Algae Eater does, almost a biting motion, but with the lips on the underside scrubbing the glass. If the store weren't 40 miles away, I would run down there and take a pic (the owners may not like that anyways). As it is...I may do that just to satisfy my curiousity...but that's a long drive. I don't want to purchase the fish, get it home, get some good pics, then find out it loves to eat my live plants and really belongs in brackish water.

Here's my best artists rendition (Picasso I am not :shake: :D )
Side and front view...the fins were clamped.
goby.jpg
 
I think the goby you're talking about is in the genus Sicyopterus. I have seen very little about them, and have seen them only rarely. Extremely cool fish. I had a pair that were thriving in a planted tank until a cyano bloom.
Here is a picture of a Japanese species.
s0japonicus.jpg
 
Well, I drove back and bought four of them. The two I saw were in one tank....right next to another tank with about 30 of them that I didn't see the first time I was there :emb: . THAT tank had the label: "Jade Goby".

Looks like I got one obvious male (first pic). Here are a couple of videos of them doing their algae eating thing. They must have been hungry, they starting eating almost immediately. They do a pretty decent job. Their fins have evolved to be suckers like Bumble-bee gobies...which was a bit of a problem. They held on to the capture cup pretty good. So the guy had to pry/slide them out...as a result their "suckers" are bleeding a little bit...nothing major though.

VIDEOS REMOVED

Male below:
goby3.jpg

Profile (I think my drawring was pretty dang good :D )
goby1.jpg

Close-up of the lips I was describing...
goby2.jpg


EDIT: they have now moved on to cleaning the leaves on my crypts....they are really turning out to be worth the money.
 
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