Eleotris Picta

[juliep]

ok, i am new on here. this is the deal. i know this fish is an eleotris picta. i figured i could try to find out some info since everyone on here seems to know a lot about fish. we have a jaguar cichlid, oscar, tilapia butti, and some small jack dempsey's, green terror, and a texas cichlid. anyway, my husband got this eleotris picta at the lfs and didn't really know much about it, but thought we could find out info online once we got home. note: the lfs was about 1hr 20 min. away, so we couldn't go read about it first and go back right after. we can't find any info about compatibilty with other fish, etc. we can find scientific info but no info about other pple's experiences with these kind of fish. please help me if you can. we originally put him in the tank with our larger jag, and the thing was chasing our jag(who is pretty evil) all over the tank within 20 minutes of putting him in there. i just don't know if he can do any harm to our jag. he is kind of our baby and we wouldn't want him to get hurt. any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

[CFC]

The goby will eat anything it can fit into its fairly large mouth so anything less than half the gobies size is in danger, as with most other large sleaper gobies they can also be fairly aggressive so tankmates need to be large and robust, fish that are easily picked on will be relentlessly chased and nipped.

 

[nmonks]

Sleepers are remarkably consistent animals in terms of care. They are almost all territorial, piscivorous, but otherwise indifferent to tankmates they cannot eat. I have keep Dormitator maculatus with Central American cichlids and had no problems, at least over the short term, but bear in mind Eleotris picta is (in part of its range at least) a brackish water fish. You don't need a lot of salt (SG 1.003 should be fine) but that does rule out keeping them with salt-intolerant fish. Many Central American and African riverine cichlids are fine with a little salt, but your oscar won't appreciate the addition of salt at all.

It is possible to keep brackish water sleepers without salt for long periods of time, perhaps permanently, as they (usually) seem much less bothered than, say, gobies or mudskippers. You do need to make sure the pH is above 7 (I'd recommend 7.5) and the hardness is fairly high to buffer against rapid pH changes. Also, water quality should be very good, as the "sensitivity" to freshwater seems to increase with pollution levels. So if you are going to keep it in freshwater, make sure you stay on top of water changes, remove uneaten food, etc.

You won't find much about this species in aquarium books except the specialist ones like the Aqualog brackish book. Otherwise, anything relevant to Oxyeleotris marmorata or Dormitator maculatus would be entirely applicable to this species. Those two species are quite commonly kept and very similar to E. picta in terms of care and habits. Likewise, anything about Butis butis would be relevant, too, though do note E. picta gets to at least 40 cm / 20 inches in the wild.

Big sleepers are lovely fish, and can become very tame. Some are also very good to eat, I'm told, being considered a delicacy across much of their range!

Cheers, Neale

 

[juliep]

thank u both for the info. that is more info than i had. i still just can't believe that this fish is so hard to find any info about. i did think that it would be so hard to find pple with actual experiences with these.