I made a mistake...the guy at the fish store told me the engineer goby would change colors and they're reef safe and are super cool...I was sold and bought one without doing my due diligence in research and now my engineer is engineering! He's dug a crazy amount of sand up from under my LR and now my aquascape is sinking/falling over and i'm afraid either A: a piece of LR will fall and puncture my aquarium or B: a piece will fall and smush a coral or some other animal caught in its path. So my questions are am I being over protective of my tank and its inhabitants and if my worries are legitimate is there any known method of removing the engineer other than taking the live rock out piece by piece till I find him? Thank you all
While it would be unlikely for a piece of rock to smash through the bottom or side of the tank, it can happen.
Yep you are most likely going to have to remove all the rock, and dig out the engineer goby. The other possible alternative is to use short lengths ot PVC pipe to "suspend" the live rock above the sandbed. Of course, you'll need to remove all the rock to do that too.
I have an Engineer Goby too. I love mine, he is the coolest fish. It changes color from black and white to black and yellow greenish stripes as an adult. He digs a bit but once he gets settled it will taper down quite a bit. Mine is about 10 inches long. A lot bigger that the 6 inches I heard they get.
Anyway, what I did was buy 2 or three sticks of putty and just started puttying whatever looked like it might be in jeopardy. I also reinforced some of the rock work below gravel level. It's a really cool fish if your willing to do a little gluing up.
Cool thanks guys...Thomas do you ever see yours? I haven't seen mine since I put him in but I figure its because he's still getting used to his new surroundings.
If you are going to keep him I would highly suggest redoing your rockwork and support it with pieces of PVC. I went a little overboard for support for my rockwork.
The same thing could have been accomplished with just scrap pieces of PVC.
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150 gal Custom. Born 5/7/07. 50gal, 29gal, 20gal Sumps. 30gal Frag Tank. ETSS 800 Skimmer, Deltec APF600 Skimmer. PFO Solaris Lighting on Display and Frag Tank
I see mine every time I walk by the tank. He's a begger. When he was just a few weeks old ( in my tank ) I didn't see him much. He was pretty shy at first. I just glanced over at my tank and I see the pile of sand he's been playing around with is about 6" high now. I'll probably knock it down when I do a WC later tonight.
Engineer Goby woes
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