What Is Your Favorite Sand Sifter?

[ryangrieder]

i want to get 1 or 2 more sand sifters for my tank. i have had a few in the past, and feel the best sand sifters always were the bullet gobys. they would sift all day every day, and had some nice blue/teal/green tinted colors.


So, Whats Your favorite Sand Sifter? then after words, maybe ill reconsider the bullet...

 

[Arati]

I like the orange diamond sleeper gobys. they seem to stay lower in the tank, and recognize frozen food better then the yelllow head sleeper. never tried the bullet gobys.

I had a pair of twin spots (signal) gobys. I would never get another.

ime most sifter gobys slowly starve in home aquariums. target feeding them is a must.. imo

 

[lfsmarineguy]

V. wardii are awesome, one of my favorite fish in general.

V. strigata (Gold Head Sleeper) more common and very active with great color.


I think they are two of the best looking sifters that are regularly available and fairly easy to get eating frozen foods like mysis.

 

[ryangrieder]

Aren't the wardii gobys difficult to keep?

 

[lfsmarineguy]

It takes some of them a little while to get eating but if you offer small live foods like brine or small ghost shrimp (or even tiny fish) and work them over to good frozen foods it's usually not that bad.

 

[thirty5]

I have a diamond goby.. The thing never stops!! Always sifting the sand. If I was able to get it out, I would trade with you. Having only a 28g tank it always throws up a mist of sand.

 

[xxxAngeloxxx]

I love my bullet goby hes my saltwater k-9 lol he gets the job done in my tank. I remember when i first got him i saw sand mountains on every where in my tank till he figured out what spot he liked the most.

 

[ryangrieder]

I know the diamond is good and all...but it's just....blah. It's really not a sharp looking fish ya know. It's white with a thin line of orange touch. I like the wardii but was always scared of him. Bullet gobys are always champion sand sitters. All day every minute they sift, super hardy, and colorful...

 

[MatthewScars]

How do blue spotted jaw fish stack up against a bullet or diamond?

 

[lfsmarineguy]

Jawfish burrow but they don't sift. In a small tank they might create enough burrows to keep the sand mixed but in a larger system I don't think they would be nearly as effective.

 

[charliethetuna88]

By far the best sandsifter is an engineer govt there awsome looking and will move ur whole sand bed around

 

[lfsmarineguy]

Engineers are cool but they are prolific sand movers. If the rock structure isn't sturdy they will definitely find any flaw and topple it. Plus you can't keep anything on the sand that you don't want buried. I always liked the way they moved back and forth seamlessly to confuse predators.

 

[jcurry]

caribbean tigertail cucumbers, no sand dust, no burying corals they just eat dirty sand and excrete clean sand.

 

[basiab]

I like the Rainfordi goby. They have a very nice color, are very peacefull but they need a very mature sandbed. Their meal comes from what they sift. I don't know if they can be trained to other foods, in my case they did not accept anything. If the sand is not mature and not large enough to support his needs he will starve. I don't know if this is true for all sifters.

 

[ryangrieder]

Jawfish wont sift, they just dig.

The engineer goby, I have had a few in the past. They get a foot long within several months, and after a month they just hide under a rock for the remainder of the time.

Never had a cucumber before

Rainfordi goby i have had, but they seem kind of small. One of them I had years ago just disappeared, and the other sifter, but they were just...small. The bullet goby can get about as fat as my thumb and almost 6inches. so obviously they can sift more and faster in one shot. Rainfordi may be great, in a smaller nano cube or something...

 

[masterswimmer]

caribbean tigertail cucumbers, no sand dust, no burying corals they just eat dirty sand and excrete clean sand.

+1 but I like the Black Cucumber just as much.

Russ