Dragon Fish

[Aienu]

Anyone had any experience with these fish? My boyfriend and I went on this wild tangent of buying these things (ended up with 4).. They would eat live bloodworms or brown worms or whatever those icky things were.. but we're down to one and they've just been slowly dying. They would spaz lots and try to jump out of the tank when I had them in my twenty gallon with my electric catfish at a warmer temperature of 75*F (maybe they were electric and didnt like my e-catfish?) and seemed to simmer down when we put them in a tank with themselves in cooler water 70*F.

All we have is one and he doesn't look to happy and has a crappy appetite. Look like this:

http/www.aquariumfish.net/catalog_pages/...dragon_fish.htm

I've tried their feeding suggestions, he just not happy. Any suggestions?

 

[CFC]

The fish in your link is Gobioides broussonettii which requires brackish water to survive, when kept in freshwater they waste away and die. They also have a very specialised diet as they are filter feeders which have to be fed with tiny live and frozen foods, bloodworms are too big for them to manage really so baby brine shrimp, small daphnia and frozen cyclops should be used to insure they are well fed and healthy. Because of this diet they generally dont do well when kept in normal community tanks and should really be kept in a species tank.

Electric catfish should never be housed with any other fish, the eletrical charge they use to stun prey is lethal to other fish.

 

[LadyMinion]

Sounds like your electric catfish could be the culprit - even though you've moved them to another tank, they may have been too stressed after the ordeal. Being "stung" by the catfish may have caused irreparable damage to internal organs.

I have three of these gobies and have never seen such behaviour.

edit - I've just read CFS's post and he is correct in that these are usually brackish fish. The behaviour yours were showing can be typical for a fish in the wrong water type.

 

[Aienu]

That's the problem with LFS's that don't know what they're doing.

That Electric Catfish I was told would only get a foot long, but what I've been reading from the web will be 3' needing a 135g tank and it'll be able to stun a human

As far as the violet goby goes, only one stayed in the same tank as the electric cat and he's long gone, this is just last of the few we bought. Even the fish stores online say bloodworms and ghost shrimp.. I guess this would explain why they really never "went" for food. What a pain! And I thought I only needed to raise baby brine for fry! Anywho, thanks for the responses.. now I know where to tell the LFS's they're going wrong and to fix their care sheets!