From the Hong Kong area comes this beautiful, but also delicate goby. The maximum length of the species is about 10 cm. The basic temperature requirements are well known from the White Clouds (Tanichthys albonubes), which occurs in the same region: 16-22°C for normal care, somewhat higher for breeding, short-term up to 28°C are tolerated.
There is still very little experience with Sineleotris saccharae. In our normal fish house aquarium (140 x 60 x 30 cm, L x D x H) with a stock of 25 specimens and a piece of root wood as the only furnishing (no substrate, no plants) the animals show a rather free swimming behavior, comparable to Stigmatogobius sadanundio. Each fish defends a zone of about 5-10 cm around itself against conspecifics. If a conspecific enters this space, it is threatened, with the throat region turning black, and driven away. If he does not want to give way, it can also come to mouth tugging, as one knows it from cichlids. Over a larger distance than 15 cm the opponent is not pursued however, it comes to no damage fights.
In the photo tank the behavior is completely different and more typical for gobies. Here they are bottom oriented and hide behind stones etc.. One specimen has even burrowed into the sand, so there is still a lot to explore about these beautiful fish! Concerning the food they are unproblematic. We feed them live food (red and white mosquito larvae, Tubifex) in the photo tank they also snatched parts of food tablets, which were actually intended for feeding other animals.
For our customers: the animals have code 455223 on our stock list. Please note that we only supply wholesale.
Text & photos: Frank Schäfer
