Help put my mind at ease about this Lawnmower Blenny

[greg683x]

So Ive been keeping fish for years, but Ive never had a lawnmower blenny. Ive heard theyre great and have good personalities so I figured Id pick up one and put it my reef tank

Ive had this guy in QT with a watchman goby for almost 5 days now and I can't get him eating. Ive tried seaweed sheets, algae wafers, some mixed spinach with mysis shrimp, and some freezedried brine. Havent seen him eat anything, I have witnessed the Watchman Goby eating. It has been 5 days, so perhaps hes been eating in secret while Im not staring at him through the glass (he does get a bit skiddish while I got my face up in front of the glass to watch him).

So two things are bothering me right now.....the first one is him not eating, im waiting for the day I come home from work and he has passed away from starvation.

The other thing, is if he survives, and hes this difficult to feed, I'm worried he will pick at my corals in my display tank once hes in there if theres not an abundance of nuisance algae for him to feed on and he wont take manufactured food.

I know these fish are really popular in reef tanks, but in the back of my mind was the occasional post I saw online of someone saying these guys went after their corals. I originally dismissed them 90% of posts about these fish say theyre reef safe, and every fish distributor has them listed as reef safe, but now Im starting to bite my fingernails about adding him to the display once his QT is up.

 

[horseplay]

Mine never touched corals. Should be eating algae all over the place all the time.

 

[fairl80z]

My lawnmower eats like a pig . At first he didn't want to eat . But later came around to it . Try formula one flakes mine loves it .

 

[Bogue Chitto]

Give it a little time, if it won't eat the algae sheets, I don't know what he will eat. I hope you get him to eating soon. They can go a while without eating and then bounce back, good luck with him.

 

[SaltyDoug]

Try tying some nor sheets to a small piece of rock.

Mine took a while to start eating now he eats literally everything I put in the tank, to the pointended he got lazy with algae eating.

 

[scooter31707]

True. I had luck with the Nori sheets rubberband to a small piece of rock to make it look more natural. It took him all about 10 minutes to figure out what it was and never had a problem since. He is a pure pig and aggressive to smaller fish that hangs in the bottom half of the water column. I do catch him nipping at the SPS corals. He may be grazing some algae, at least that's what I'm hoping.

 

[Waters40]

Mine will not eat anything but algae from the rocks....ignores all other food.

 

[MDK007]

If in qt rubber band some algea sheet to a pvc elbow and leave it for 24 hrs. Mine would not eat in front of me when i got it, so i did that and he polished it off. I then feed flakes for 3 days to no avail. Kept repeating and now he eats flake in my qt. This required a number of wc as the agea sheets left in for so long were causing ammonia to build. All is good with him now and eats in front of me. I was worried as well the first week, almost took him back.