Yellow Headed Jawfish

[DragonReef]

Friend or Menace..

Guy's I'm toying with the idea of adding a Yellow headed jawfish to my tank.

I'm not worried about him destroying the life in my substrate, my 2 wrasses take care of that

I know that they can scatter substrate all over the place which can become irritating, but they do a really good job of turning the substrate and helping to stir up detritus.

So those of you that have them, are you sorry you put him in or do you love your jawfish ?

 

[Mekaeel]

the only bad experience ive really had from them is that they tend to drop the gravel onto my clams.anyway mines is dead,it jumped outa the tank

 

[Tariq]

dont have one but but i think their like sand sifter gobis, except the can spit substrate at you

 

[KevinW]

Love mine - has lots of character and also does a great job of moving sediments around my tank. Means that I have to brush my live rock off fairly frequently which also helps stop buildup of fines/detritus on the rock in calmer areas of the tank.

 

[Alan]

Had one in my system and in all honesty they are a very cool fish but would not put one back as they drop substrate all over the place and in a tank with high flow like yours could even leave the water looking merky. Rather look for a pair of twin spot gobies, not easy to find though.

 

[viper357]

They create an awful mess, there are 1 or 2 other types of sand sifting jawfish that do not swim up and around before they spit the sand out, but their names escape me, give me a few minutes, I will have to do a quick search to try and remember which ones they are.

 

[Tariq]

are you talking bout the dusky(opistognathus whitehurstii) jawfish??

 

[Alan]

Here are the twin spots, they are awsum and dont mess, just keep eyes open to find them. They are imported now and again.

 

[SIMS]

Wow cool fish!

 

[viper357]

This is the one I was thinking of...

Orange Diamond goby or Orange Spot goby - Valencienna puellaris

 

[SIMS]

and how do you pronounce this.....Valencienna puellaris

 

[viper357]

I don't, I just write it down on a piece of paper and say to the LFS dude - "I want 2 of these..." and show him the paper

 

[Tariq]

what about watchman gobis Viper, dont they sift sand aswell??

 

[SIMS]

I don't, I just write it down on a piece of paper and say to the LFS dude - "I want 2 of these..." and show him the paper

not sure if my LFS dude would be able to understand - he organised me a tank and was confused when I said I wantd a C2C with an external Dorso Standpipe I tried to explain but it just made it worse...

 

[Alan]

what about watchman gobis Viper, dont they sift sand aswell??

The watchman gobies dig and tunnel under the sand but dont sift it like the jaw fish but are also awsum fish.

 

[Tariq]

but the jaw fish also digs a tunnel thats why they require deep sand

 

[Mekaeel]

the Orange Diamond goby looks pretty cool

 

[Alan]

Yes, but the jawfish actually sifts the sand through its gills while looking for food, the watchman doesn't sift the sand for food they eat from the water colum.

 

[viper357]

the Orange Diamond goby looks pretty cool

Yeah they are very nice fish, I had 2 of them but lost them when I moved over to the new tank. Once I have finished with my new tank I will definitely be getting 2 more.

They are pretty placid fish, also like to dig tunnels and hide under rocks, but when they do sift the sand through their gills they don't swim up to the top of the tank and dump their load over all your precious corals I constantly had to blow loads of sand off my montipora's with a pump.

 

[Mekaeel]

i noticed that they chuck the gravel all over the clams,corals and rockwork.but awsome fish