Tailspot blenny

Care at a glance

Overview

Keep one per tank, since tailspots are solitary and can be territorial toward their own kind and toward similar small perching blennies unless the tank is large enough for separate territories. Toward unrelated fish they are genuinely peaceful and among the easier small blennies to house. They are reef safe and reliably leave corals, clams, and inverts alone, which makes them one of the safer picks for a small reef. They perch and graze on the bottom and rockwork rather than swimming in the open. Hold stable marine water at a pH of 8.1 to 8.4 and 22 to 26 C, give them plenty of live rock, and feed a mostly herbivorous diet of marine algae and spirulina with some meaty foods, supplemented by the film algae they pick at.

In the wild

Tailspot blennies come from shallow western Pacific reefs around the Philippines and Indonesia, where they perch among rubble and branching corals and dart back into a hole when startled. Like other Ecsenius blennies they are small, bottom-oriented perching fish that want plenty of live rock with nooks to hide in and surfaces to graze, rather than open swimming room. Keep them in stable marine water at a pH of 8.1 to 8.4 and a temperature of 22 to 26 C. A mature tank with some algae growth suits them, since they graze film algae along with prepared foods.

Good to know

This is a small combtooth blenny in the family Blenniidae, reaching only about 6 cm, named for the dark spot at the base of the tail. It has the big-eyed, blunt-nosed face typical of the genus and often shows a soft blue and gold wash over the body. Like most Ecsenius it has not been reliably bred in home aquaria, so trade fish are wild-caught.

Did you know

It is one of the best-behaved small blennies for a reef tank, since unlike the lawnmower and bicolor blennies it rarely bothers corals or clams even when its algae runs low. Its small size and calm nature make it a common choice for nano reefs where a bigger grazing blenny would not fit.

Related species

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