Diamond Goby.. should I get one?

[jepoy]

My sand is getting ugly brown spots all over.. I hear that the diamond goby does a great job of sifting thru the sand and cleaning it. Thoughts? Experience? I've tried nassarius snails and conches but they can't seem to keep up.

 

[Coral reefer]

I love them, but you need a lid on your tank and don't wanna have one if you keep corals on your sand bed.

 

[JVU]

Neat fish, but they and the nassarius snails are both carnivores (don’t eat algae). They will stir but not clean the sand of algae.

 

[iCon]

Might be cyano or diatoms. Got a pic?

 

[Kmooresf]

They are very neat.............however..........I gave mine away, because it simply through sand all over the corals. It was constant and not just a little.......a lot!! This is in a 300 gallon tank, and they can cover some ground!! They are very fun to watch though, and as Mike said, if you don’t keep corals low, or in the sand you could be fine.


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[Bruce Spiegelman]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

[kinetic]

I asked the same question, and got the same answers as above. I ended up just stirring the sand manually every so often. Does the trick and is pretty easy.

Every week when I do a water change, I just siphon the water through the sand (vacuuming essentially).

 

[euod]

It's nice to have a variety of fish in the tank. Diamond goby is quite a character to watch. You may want to look into bella goby and yellow watchman if you like to have other colors in the tank.

 

[Tmjvb]

I have a pair valenciennea sexguttata in my 150. They do a great job of keeping the sand clean and IME aren’t as aggressive and don’t throw sand around like diamond sifters do.
They eat everything including nori.

 

[JVU]

Several months ago I started just forcefully turkey-basting the sand once every 1-2 weeks or so with filter socks in and return pump on high and gyre pumps doing their thing. It’s amazing how it frees up all the detritus out of the sand and buries/kills any cyano or other algae starting up.

Clean the socks after an hour or so, set the return pump back to normal speed, and all done. Before that I would siphon clean the sand with half my water changes. The new method is less likely to injure livestock buried in the sand, keeps the sand cleaner, and is a lot less work so I do it more often. Also I can clean areas I couldn’t reach with a bulky siphon tube.

I’m also trying out the trend to do fewer and smaller water changes, so this fits in well with that.

 

[jepoy]

Might be cyano or diatoms. Got a pic?

Having battled both, I've become somewhat of an expert on both cyano and diatoms so i know how they look like lol. This is just sand just turning green or brown with algae.

 

[jepoy]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Soooo... is that a "no"?

 

[Bruce Spiegelman]

Soooo... is that a "no"?

One cost me well over $10,000.00.

 

[jepoy]

I asked the same question, and got the same answers as above. I ended up just stirring the sand manually every so often. Does the trick and is pretty easy.

Every week when I do a water change, I just siphon the water through the sand (vacuuming essentially).

Several months ago I started just forcefully turkey-basting the sand once every 1-2 weeks or so with filter socks in and return pump on high and gyre pumps doing their thing. It’s amazing how it frees up all the detritus out of the sand and buries/kills any cyano or other algae starting up.

Clean the socks after an hour or so, set the return pump back to normal speed, and all done. Before that I would siphon clean the sand with half my water changes. The new method is less likely to injure livestock buried in the sand, keeps the sand cleaner, and is a lot less work so I do it more often. Also I can clean areas I couldn’t reach with a bulky siphon tube.

I’m also trying out the trend to do fewer and smaller water changes, so this fits in well with that.

Yeah, I've tried manually cleaning the sand as well, I've done the turkey baster thing a few times and it seems to do the trick. Although I've read somewhere that disturbing the substrate too much can cause an ammonia spike? Is this true?

 

[Gablami]

I really like my pair. They have a great personality. In terms of shifters they stay close to the bottom. Sand is spotless. You can’t keep coral frags on your sand though cause they will get covered. I have all my corals on rock.

It did take me awhile to get a healthy pair in my tank though. They are touchy with TTM and love to jump.

I do an automatic water change and didn’t want to have to siphon my sand bed. I had been using a baster to mix up the sand and get the detritus out. But now with the gobies and AWC it’s super low maintenance.

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[jepoy]

I have a pair valenciennea sexguttata in my 150. They do a great job of keeping the sand clean and IME aren’t as aggressive and don’t throw sand around like diamond sifters do.
They eat everything including nori.

Thanks I'll check out the valenciennea sexguttata, hopefully googling it won't take me to a porn site lol

 

[jepoy]

One cost me well over $10,000.00.

What? How? Did it sift through your wallet and go on a spending spree?

 

[jepoy]

I really like my pair. They have a great personality. In terms of shifters they stay close to the bottom. Sand is spotless. You can’t keep coral frags on your sand though cause they will get covered. I have all my corals on rock.

It did take me awhile to get a healthy pair in my tank though. They are touchy with TTM and love to jump.


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I'm shocked to find out that they are actually jumpers... for critters that spend so much time low on the tank. I don't have much corals yet, but I had planned on putting some on the sand eventually. I guess I'll have to rethink that.. or rethink the goby.

 

[jepoy]

Doing research on the diamond goby, I stumbled upon one of the funniest tank videos i've ever seen. See this is the kind of personality that I want to see in a fish lol.

 

[JVU]

Yeah, I've tried manually cleaning the sand as well, I've done the turkey baster thing a few times and it seems to do the trick. Although I've read somewhere that disturbing the substrate too much can cause an ammonia spike? Is this true?

The issue of releasing something toxic is if you have a sandbed (especially a deep one) that has not been disturbed for a long time so that it has developed anoxic zones or a huge amount of decaying detritus. If you clean it frequently it isn’t a problem.