identify a fish

[Smonkey15]

the other day i saw this fish that looked like a blenny at the lfs and it was taking mouthfuls of sand in its mouth and passing it through its gills. any idea what it was? i forgot to ask the guy and now i'm curious. thanks

 

[jamal-188]

I belive there are a few fish that do this, however for the most part they are not recommended unless your tank is large. Most sand sifting animals such as this will eat all the food in the sandbed including benefical organisms and then starve to death over time.

 

[sw-addict]

In our smaller tank we have had 2 such fish they were orange spotted gobies one died after our cow fish decided to poison the tank, the other is doing fine and eats frozen brineshrimp,bloodworms and seaweed.

 

[reefrunner69]

sand sifting goby of some sort, with colors and descriptions of the fishes body, might be able to be a little more specific.

 

[JProx]

Wooooh belinda! i thought i was the only one. Yrs ago i lost my entire tank because my cow fish decided to go crazy, sorry to hear about the loss though, but i am glad i am not the only one. Even people at my LFS 'doubted' my claim. It was really upsetting 2yrs worth of work down the drain, he was the last addition to the tank, in more ways than one.

 

[notmuffy]

If it was bigger than a blenny, you probably were seeing a Mother Sailfin Dragonet. Ours was mislabled and mixed in with scooter blennies at the LFS, the one difference being that they are harder to feed. We bought him because we had a huge over-population of 'pods, but he wiped them out in like 3-4 days! We have him eating live brine shrimp now, but he wouldn't take them until he was really hungry. Now we are trying to switch him to frozen krill but he's not taking that yet.
They prefer a deep sand bed for sifting and burying themselves completely at night.