Posted by Sarah on August 7, 2008
Bumblebee Goby On Moss Ball
I don’t think any of the Bumblebee Goby Fry made it.
I read several times that any snails in the tank would eat the eggs, and since we used to feed snails to the puffer that used to reside in the tank, there are tons of snails appearing now that he’s not in it any more.
The males have shown some breeding colors since we removed the eggs, but I haven’t seen any new eggs.
Even if I do I don’t think that I will remove those eggs unless I have a clean snail free tank to put them into.
Posted by Sarah on July 24, 2008
Bumblebee Goby Eggs in Shell
I just went to turn off the light in my bumblebee gobies (BBG) tank, and one of the gobies was in his shell – all you could see was his eye, and it was so cute, that I decided to take a picture.
I was happily snapping away – and then I looked and realized that there were eggs hanging from the top of the shell!
I am so excited!
We are out of tank space, so I am going to try to put the shell in a breeder net in the BBG tank to see if we can get some fry.
The only problem is that these guys are going to be tiny, and they swim around in the middle of the water column to eat so we have to keep the food moving so that they get enough to eat.
We noticed last week that one of the males was pale, and I was worried that he was sick, so I looked up pale bumblebee gobies online, and realized that the males get pale when they are ready to spawn.
Of course, I was excited, so I can’t tell you why I’m surprised that there are eggs now, but boy am I happy.
Here are the two reports I’ve read about spawning Bumblebee Gobies so far – Spawning the Bumblebee Goby, and Bee Keeping: Breeding the Bumblebee Goby.
Both of these reports indicate that their bumblebee gobies were in brackish water when they spawned, but mine are in freshwater with a temperature of 83F.
That may be part of why I’m so surprised 
As I’ve mentioned before though, I did read that these gobies were freshwater fish, and so I decided to try keep them in freshwater, even though most people say that they are brackish water fish.
Although we did have a figure 8 puffer out of the tank with the bumblebee gobies, we moved him out a week ago, because one of the gobies disappeared, and I was scared that 8-Ball ate him.
So 8-Ball had to go.
If you’ve got experience raising bumblebee gobies I’d love to hear about it.
Please leave a comment and share your experiences.
Posted by Sarah on June 24, 2008
Our bumblebee gobies are so cute, that I decided we needed more.
I ordered three bumblebee gobies from The Tropical Fish Shoppe, but the supplier sent 4, so I ended up with 4, which is fine, because I couldn’t decide if I wanted 3 or 4 to begin with, so it’s nice that the decision for more was made for me .
There was a little bit of chasing when we added the new bumblebee gobies to the tank, but now everyone seems to be getting along fine.
We did rearrange the tank so the gobies would have to work out new territories for themselves -we wanted to make sure that the new gobies would have some space they could live it.
The picture shows two of them that look like they are about to both dive into a shell.
We have seen a couple of the gobies in the shells, but they don’t seem to stay in there.
One of the bumblebee gobies prefers the much larger taco that we got for our plecos, and then moved into that tank when the plecos didn’t use them.
Have you gotten any new fish lately?
Click on leave a comment and tell me about them.
Posted by Sarah on April 28, 2008
We made it back safely from the Tropical Fish Show – I still can’t believe that it snowed so much here.
Jeff is a raffle addict, and he won enough fish stuff to fill a huge bag – and I’m sure he’ll tell you about it later.
I got some purple shells for my bumblebee gobies from the show, and some moss balls from Terrequatics, a fish store in Champlin, MN.
Here’s a picture of one of my Bumblebee Gobies perching on a shell a few hours ago. I still haven’t seen any of them in the shells, but I’m hoping they’ll get in there soon.
I want some Bumbleebee Goby fry!
Jeff got a cave system from Tiffany of Salty’s Digz, a gorgeous piece of driftwood, and some Ultra Color Fish Food from Pretty Bird (the fish part of the website is still under construction).
We also saw some beautiful fish – I was really impressed with the discus!
They are a lot larger than ours are!
I was a little disappointed in the one talk we attended because I didn’t fully understand what it was supposed to be about.
Since the talk was titled “Oddball Fish for Aquaria” I thought that it would provide information about fish that aren’t commonly found in aquariums, but it mainly focused on breeding fish that are commonly found in aquariums, but aren’t commonly bred. I think we have or have had most of the oddball fish that were mentioned that aren’t commonly found in aquariums, like the Australian Desert Gobies, Bumblebee Gobies, and Dwarf Puffers, although he called them pea puffers.
Since there were weather problems (the roads that normally take to get from Moorhead to Minneapolis were closed Friday, and Saturday, but we managed to get through ok while they were open, we decided to leave early, so we missed the Plants in the Aquaria talk, which I was looking forward too.
If you made it to the show this year, I’d love to hear what you thought about it, so leave a comment and tell me.
Here’s a picture of Jeff’s driftwood in the Discus tank.
The Discus really seem to like it, and are trying to figure out who gets to live behind it.
