Plant material in the form of cooked peas, spinach, and Spirulina flakes should also be provided from time to time.įat sleepers are not particularly aggressive, but their size and dietary habits mean that small fish will simply be viewed as food. They like to sift sand for food, and under aquarium conditions will readily consume any pellets or algae wafers they find, along with meaty foods such as earthworms, river shrimps, bloodworms, krill, and chopped white fish fillet. lebretonis from West Africa, a similar-looking species that only gets to about 4 inches in length.Īll Dormitator are omnivores, and the fat sleeper is no exception. It’s occasionally traded outside of North America, though it can be easily confused with the clay goby D. The fat sleeper is hardy and adaptable, and has been kept by American aquarists since at least the 1930s. There is considerable variation in size, however, and most specimens do not get that big. By goby standards the fat sleeper is a giant, with a maximum recorded length of more than 27 inches. Water chemistry isn’t too critical, and they do reasonably well in hard, basic fresh water, though ideal conditions would be slightly to moderately brackish, with a specific gravity of 1.003 to 1.010 at 77☏. The fat sleeper is found in brackish-water marshes and streams along the Atlantic coastline of the Americas from North Carolina to Brazil. Indeed, with my first example, you might well be able to catch your own.ĭormitator maculatus is one of the so-called sleeper gobies, supposedly named because of their lethargic, sleepy dispositions. Some are familiar, others less so, but all of these fish are available if you know where to look. There are many freshwater and brackish species that illustrate well the opportunities presented by the order Gobioidei. If any group of aquarium fishes needed a sales pitch, surely it was the gobies! What other group of fishes includes so many small, colorful, and interesting species that are ideally suited to aquarium life? Unfortunately, they’re also woefully underrated by hobbyists and retailers alike, often dismissed as being shy, finicky feeders that are annoyingly difficult to breed. Do that many people keep gobies? Wouldn’t they prefer I talked about livebearers or cichlids, or some other group of popular tropical fish? No, they wanted gobies.īut it makes sense. At first I was a bit surprised by this offer. Join the goby craze! An international aquarium aficionado reports on eight great old and new favorite gobies that make small, colorful, and interesting additions to aquariums of all types.Įarly this year, the Minnesota Aquarium Society kindly flew me across the Atlantic to give a talk about gobies.
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