Gecko goby

Care at a glance

Overview

This is a large, predatory sleeper that sits still on the bottom and ambushes whatever swims within reach, so keep it singly and only with tankmates too big to become a meal. It is aggressive as a hunter rather than a fin nipper, but at close to 19 centimeters it can swallow surprisingly large fish, which makes tankmate choice a matter of size and caution. Provide caves and heavy wood or stone cover it can wedge into and claim. Feed meaty foods such as earthworms, prawn, mussel, and large frozen items, and do not expect it to chase flake in open water. A tank of around 200 liters gives it the floor space and structure it needs.

In the wild

Belobranchus belobranchus lives in the lower, coastal reaches of island streams across the Indo-Pacific, from Indonesia and the Philippines to New Guinea and southern Japan, in fresh and brackish water over rock and gravel. Give it a tank with boulders, wood, and a sand or fine gravel bottom, plus dim lighting and steady, clean flow. Warm water suits it, around 23 to 27 C at roughly pH 6.5 to 7.8.

Good to know

Belobranchus belobranchus is a sleeper goby in the family Eleotridae, growing to about 19 centimeters, and it carries a rare kind of scientific name, a tautonym, in which the genus and species words are identical. Like many of its relatives it is amphidromous in the wild: adults spawn in fresh water and the tiny larvae wash out to sea before returning upstream to grow. Its aquarium breeding is not recorded.

Did you know

In its home streams the young of this goby return from the sea in huge numbers and are netted as a delicacy, part of a traditional Indonesian fishery called nike that is built on the annual run of juvenile gobies upriver.

Common questions

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