Canary blenny

I've had a canary blenny for several months now and have previously had another one. Their behavior is fascinating. They really seem to like to eat spaghetti worms. I've even seen them dive down into the sand and pull one out when there is nothing visible on the sand surface-(?chemical detection?).  The one problem is that they have never accepted any prepared food and mostly just live off pods and whatever they can scrounge. Anyway, I've done a couple things in the past couple days to my tank, and all the sudden the blenny can't get enough frozen mysis shrimp. The first thing I did was add some much needed circulation (Thanks Dana!) in the form of a Tunze Wavebox. I thought maybe the bouncing around of the shrimp in the current made them appear more appetizing. The second thing I did was add a canary wrasse. I really wanted this fish but was afraid it might outcompete the blenny for pods or that they might be aggressive toward eachother given their similar appearance. Also my little cherub pygmy angel had really bullied the blenny initially and I was afraid of a replay of that event. Well it turns out that the wrasse didn't get hassled at all by the angel, probably because it didn't recognize the wrasse as a new fish. Secondly, the wrasse and blenny are like little buddies and swim around the tank together. I think maybe this added security might also have prompted the blenny to eat. Well this is sort of a long pointless post, but the point is this hobby always surprises me and I can never predict what's going to happen-good or bad I guess!

Edited by jacobse1 - March 08 2007 at 9:10am

That's awesome work Jeff!

 Awesome picture. Great combination!

Great pictures thanks,  I also had to look really close to tell they were two different types of fish.

As a sidenote, a rock crab in my tank was probably "bitten" by the blenny after it took a swipe at the blenny.  The rock crab crawled to the top of the rock work and flopped over dead (at least this is what I think happened to the rock crab).

Edited by Corwando - March 08 2007 at 6:36pm

I don't want to jinx my new fish by giving it a name, but it has definitely earned the moniker- LAZY wrASSe. My lights come on pretty early in the morning so I can feed before I go to work. This guy has been asleep every mornng this week. Today he finally came out an hour after lights on and only after I started feeding. He reminds me of my little brother so maybe I'll just change his name to yellow Chris.

I looked at the picture and thought "that's a wrasse not a blenny" Me too.    I almost sent a PM.  It took a couple minutes before I scrolled down and saw him.

I looked at the picture and thought "there's no splash mark".  I almost sent you a PM.  It took me a couple of minutes before I found it.

I lost one of these to starvation once - I tried feeding it everything.  This is really fascinating, I'm glad you shared it.  But I'd like someone else to try it before I get another one. Anyone willing to try it?