Very odd couple

[ACBlinky]

Not sure what's going on here, but I just looked into my 65g to find the pistol digging a new cave... using the new blenny as a substitute goby! He's keeping his antennae on the fish constantly, as he would with a goby, and seems to feel much more secure with a fish nearby. This is the first time he's come out into the open since his goby went surfing.

Here's a pic of the oddest couple I've seen in my reef to date:

 

[Andrew]

:lol: Nice Blenny.

 

[Aquabucket]

I really dig that blenny!

My old redspotted liked to get cleaned from my scarlet/skunk shrimp quite often. My sixline wrasse would see this and sometimes join in.

I am going to check my wholesalers to see if I can't score one for myself. What common name did the LFS have for it?

Good luck with it!

 

[ACBlinky]

The LFS had them labeled as leopard blennies, which are corallivores. This guy's a herbivore, I posted about him and we've ID'd him as a stigmata blenny (C. stigmaticus). Thanks for wishing me luck, I may need it -- he's acting very odd tonight, so hopefully he's okay. A few minutes ago he allowed the pistol to dump a load of sand on his head, and just now he backed into the burrow. Hopefully he's just looking for a good place to settle in for the night

 

[Aquabucket]

My redspotted would often do strange things like that and back into burrows near the substrate when it needed a rest. It also liked to wiggle around in the sand from time to time.

Is yours fattening up for you?

The stigmata has very similar feeding habits as my redspotted. Both like to constantly rasp along the rockwork feeding on micro algae. You should be able to coax him into eating other foods by spot feeding. Eventually mine took to anything including mysis and Formula 2.

Here is a shot of him backed into a hole:

 

[ReefEze]

Aquabucket thats an awesome shot :thumbsup:

 

[Peter Eichler]

I've decided that blennys are in general insane. They seem to need to be in the mix with everything. My newish Lawnmower likes to mimic the other fish in the tank and always be in their business. He has now started sifting sand since I got a rainford goby, before that he wouldn't have touched the sand. He was even getting lazy about eating algae that wasn't right near him. I added a tang and all the sudden he was super algae eater fish; swimming everywhere in the tank eating algae as fast as possible.

 

[ACBlinky]

LOL okay, I guess that's it then, he's just nuts! He's been cleaning the sand, which I never expected him to do, hanging around the nori clip with the angels, and now he's pretending to be a goby. He slept in the pistol's burrow last night, silly fish. I think the shrimp was a little confused last night, looking for cues from the fish that he wasn't getting. His goby used to keep a very close eye on things, but last night Max was just about asleep while the shrimp made new caves -- he seems to be a lousy security guard.

@Aquabucket - he's fattening up gradually, yesterday I think he started to figure out that the green stuff hanging on his perch (the nori clip) is edible. I've stopped cleaning the glass so he's at least getting some film algae, but he needs to learn to eat seaweed or algae wafers -- there's almost nothing on the rockwork for him thanks to undetectable phosphates and three angels constantly picking at anything green that tries to grow.

 

[Aquabucket]

Glad Max is fattening up for you! They sure do have a lot of character.

Did you try spot feeding him some mysis? Even though my redspotted (Stimpy) had the exact same diet and care requirements as Max he took to mysis right away and would chase down a pod or two from time to time. Protein is protein I guess.

You might want to give it a try. You can really train these guys to beg for food and perch in certain places with a spot feeder. I made mine with airline tubing fed through a hollow wand from an old set of blinds. A medicine doser was connected to the hose and was used to draw and repel the frozen food that thawed in a small container of tank water.

I am looking forward to seeing more pics of Max. Best of luck to you!