We received this pretty species of bumblebee goby from Thailand. The determination of bumblebee gobies often proofes to be quite tricky; usually a big questionmark has to be set behind the names. Brachybobius sabanus has been described initially from Borneo (Sabah), our fish have been collected in Thailand. But the illustration accompanying the original description of B. sabanus fits very good for our specimens.
B. sabanus attains a maximum length of about 2.5 cm. The coloration differs a lot individually. The species inhabits pure freshwater habitats. We were very glad to observe a spawning in our facility. But we thought the eggs would suffer from fungus quite fast. When the male was defending the whitish eggs still for days we took a closer look and discovered that the eyes of the offspring were already visible in the eggs. In fact it was the white yolk sack, not fungus that made the eggs look white! Sadly the larvae hatched on weekend in the night when no one was in our fishhouse. But we think an experienced hobbyist should be able to raise Brachygobius sabanus without problems.
For our customers: the fish have code 407252 on our stocklist. Please note that we exclusively supply the wholesale trade.
Text & photos: Frank Schäfer
