Goby

Welcome back to school! Have you been Mapling during the June holidays instead of doing revisions and your holiday assignments? School has started and time to put away your games for the moment.

This will be an article on Goby. Yes, the fish that comes out of the Bombing Fish House when it's dead. You'll meet it if you're on your way to Sotong..... For those who does not Maple, Goby is a type of fish that is summoned by the Bombing Fish House that looks like this (A bundle of Goby is the drop item when it's dead):

So how does the real-life Goby look like? It doesn't actually swim in that manner as you see it in Maple.

These are only four types of Goby. There are in fact more than 2000 species. Gobies can be found in shallow marine habitats including tide pools, coral reefs, and seagrass meadows, brackish water, lower reaches of rivers, mangrove swamps, and salt marshes. A small number of gobies (unknown exactly, but in the low hundreds) are also fully adapted to freshwater environments. These include the Asian river gobies, the Australian desert goby, and the European freshwater goby.

The most distinctive aspect of goby are the fused pelvic fins that form a disc-shaped sucker. Gobies can often be seen using the sucker to adhere to rocks and corals, and in an aquarium, they will happily stick to glass walls of the tank as well.

They are relatively small, measuring to about 10 cm in length. There are some exceptional species that can grow up to 30 cm in length. Humans do not eat them as food, but are preyed by cod, haddock, sea bass and flatfish as food. Goby feed on small animals.

Goby can be found mainly on the sand floor. Some swims around the coral, some lives in a hole dug by shrimps. Both the shrimp and goby lives together in close association. The shrimp maintains a burrow in the sand in which both the shrimp and the goby fish live. The shrimp has poor eyesight compared to the goby, but if it sees or feels the goby suddenly swim into the burrow, it will follow. The goby and shrimp keep in contact with each other, the shrimp using its antennae, and the goby flicking the shrimp with its tail when alarmed. These gobies are thus sometimes known as watchman gobies. Each party gains from this relationship: the shrimp gets a warning of approaching danger, and the goby gets a safe home and a place to lay its eggs.

Gobies are known as "cleaner gobies", remove parasites from the skin, fins, mouth, and gills of a wide variety of large fish. The most remarkable aspect of this symbiosis is that many of the fish that visit the cleaner gobies' cleaning station would otherwise treat such small fish as food (for example groupers and snappers). Again, this is a relationship where both parties gain: the gobies get a continual supply of food as big fish visit their cleaning stations, and the big fish leave the cleaning station healthier than they were when they arrived. This kind of relationship is known as MUTUALISM (both parties benefit). You will learn more under Ecology in Sec 2.

Several species of goby are kept as pets by us! The bumblebee gobies, genus Brachygobius are perhaps the most widely traded examples, being small, colourful, and easy to care for. They need tropical, hard and alkaline freshwater or slightly brackish conditions to do well. Gobies are generally peaceful towards their tankmates though territorial among themselves. Since most are small and few are predatory towards other fishes, they usually make good community fishes (meaning they don't eat other fishes in the tank).

Typically, the main problem with gobies is feeding them: with a few exceptions, the small species kept in the tank prefer live or frozen foods rather than flake, and they are not very good at competing with active species such as cichlids. It is often recommended that gobies be kept on their own or with peaceful surface dwelling species such as halfbeaks and guppies.

Find out more on other species of Goby and other fishes HERE.