Amblygobius buanensis - We are excited to introduce a new species to both the aquarium trade and to aquaculture - an adorable sand-sifter type goby called Buan's Goby. It is closely related to the more well known "sleeper banded goby" aka "dragon" or "bullet" goby A. phalaena, but with a slightly smaller adult size. Juveniles have black lines and patterns, and as they age those lines gain a beautiful reddish iridescent hue.
Buan's Goby is peaceful, reef safe, and gets along great with other peaceful reef fish. Avoid keeping it with aggressive species or animals that are large enough to eat small fish. Like other gobies, these can easily jump out of an aquarium when chased or frightened, so a tight fitting lid is required. They do exhibit sand-sifting behaviors, but don't require sand for survival.
This type of goby doesn't usually do well in captivity when wild caught, but our captive bred gobies feed on just about any fish foods offered. We recommend Easy Reefs DKI pellets and Masstick, small pellet foods like C1 and C2, frozen PE Calanus, and Hikari Mysis.
These gobies do well singly in a smaller tank of 20+ gallons. Pairs may do well in large aquariums when added at the same time, but note that this species can be aggressive toward conspecifics and is not sexually dimorphic. We recommend introducing new fish with an acclimation box.
Biota captive bred Buan's Goby eating 'red slime' Cyanobacteria testimonial on Reef2Reef.com
Moomee asked:
"How do you like the Buan’s goby? I picked one up this weekend at a LFS and absolutely love it."
Mr Fishface replied,
"I love mine. I enjoy having some activity near the sand bed and rocks. Made some nice little caves under my rocks lol! I had some cyano in my tank and used a little chemiclean to help my tank. Once it started to clump a little, my goby went to TOWN eating it up! Craziest thing I've ever seen, never had a fish eat that bacteria lol."
leaf2reef on reef2reef forum shared a video of his Biota captive bred Buan's goby eating pest Cyanobacteria. "Wonderful new addition to my tank, a peaceful sand sifter that does not create sand storm and also eat cyano. It spends most of its time sand sifting, I have no cyano on the sand, only patches on top of the rock and may be on the glass in the back, it repeatedly target these area. it just take a bite and dive back to the bottom"