Convict (Engineer) Blenny

[Marcellina]

Are they agressive? Everything I read about them says they are fascinating to watch and peaceful fish. Only thing to worry about is their burrowing nature similar to a jawfish.

Well I have a convict blenny that I adopted from another reefer. I put him in my 10G tank that only has a couple of pieces of LR in it. I was keeping him there until I had my 100G upgrade set up. The LR in there had some hair algae and I put my algae blenny in their with the convict to clean up the algae. On the 3rd day the algae blenny was gone(this is over a month ago). I checked everywhere. I have a lid so he didnt jump and there is no where to hide within the live rock. He wasnt in the HOB filter either. I have to assume the convict ate him but I havent read anything that says they kill other fish?

 

[DA fisherman]

Are we talking about the same freshwater convict??


Sent from my iPhone using Reefs

 

[anthony27]

they are fine, they just love to build tunnels and knock over rocks I had one for over 4 yeas and they get very large.

 

[Marcellina]

Its a saltwater fish. Sort of looks like a little eel. Its either called convict blenny or engineer goby but the description always says its actually neither.

 

[Marcellina]

Can they attack and kill other smaller fish? The one other fish I had in there with him was no where, there is basically no place for it to have hidden, even if it died for whatever reason I should have seen something of him. Tank is on a glass table with a HOB with a tight lid.

 

[anthony27]

they are very peacefully

 

[THEDLO]

if the fish was small (like juvi chromis small) then yea he ate him. or it was dying and he finished him off.

 

[Aquatic Life Direct]

everyone that i know that had one or a small group got rid of them because they were moving around everything. Personally i wouldnt get them...

 

[Marcellina]

Weird mine just sits at the bottom of the tank an hides under a rock.

The algae blenny was about 2.5 inches maybe 3 and he was in good health.

 

[dubs]

i had two of those things in my tank they were a nightmare they didnt bother any fish but they throw around my hermiths and they spit sand every were i would definetly not rocommend them for a reef unless u dont used ur sand bed

 

[lfsmarineguy]

engineer gobies or convict blennies are actually their own species. They are awesome at keeping the sand rotated. As long as your rock structure is built properly, meaning placed on the bottom glass and stable, they shouldn't be able to topple anything. They do get rather large pretty quickly and the way they swim is pretty cool. They shift forwards and back in place so you can't tell which way they are going.

As a side note, they do throw sand and can even handle mouthfuls of crushed coral so anything near their dig sites can get buried. So, unless you're addicted to frags and use your sand because all the rock real estate is taken, you should be fine.

 

[JARRETT SHARK]

I hate my Engineer goby because he puts sand all over my coral, my problem is cathing this SOB

 

[Marcellina]

Poor little guy seems to have such a bad rap! lol

Mine just sits at the bottom of the tank, its a bare bottom 10G, maybe thats why. I only have 4 pieces of live rock in there and grapefruit sized piece of chaeto, pump and HOB. Oh I had 2 turbo snails in there and they actually spawned recently, never saw that before! Pretty cool to see all these itsy bitsy snails on the tank walls!

Anyway the convict was just supposed to be temporary but he has been there for months and he is extremely durable bc all I do is add top off water.

After I added the algae blenny I never tried adding anything else bc my only concern is that he kills and eats fish. Other than that he is a model citizen, but it might be due to my setup. I would like to add an emerald crab bc I see a little bubble algae but worried it will get eaten.

 

[dubs]

jarret shark u have to not feed and wait till like 3 on the am with some moon light on that what i did to get the two out my tank they do make a mess with the sand they killed all my shrooms and some other corals i had on the sand bed if any one want goby that stir sand i think a dymond goby is a better go (jmo)