Pelew Stiphodon

Pelew is an archaic English name for Palau, which is where Herre described this goby in 1936. It remains a Micronesian fish: Palau for certain, most likely the Mariana Islands, and possibly as far east as Pohnpei, though the surveys contradict one another. Like the rest of the genus it lives in short, steep island streams above waterfalls, where the water is clear and fast and the rock carries a thick film of algae.

For once the two sources agree on size. FishBase gives a standard length of 4.1 cm and Seriously Fish gives 40 to 45 mm, which is the same fish measured twice.

In a tank it wants a base of sixty by thirty centimetres, 54 litres, a turnover of ten to fifteen times the volume per hour, and 22-28 °C with pH 6.5-7.5. Warmer water needs more surface movement to hold oxygen. The hard part of keeping any Stiphodon is food: they graze biofilm and algae off stone with a gut that handles little else, so the tank has to be mature and brightly lit, and many keepers run a second container of algae-covered stones to rotate in.

A male with two or three females is the recommended minimum. They ignore dwarf shrimp, and small stream fish such as Tanichthys or Microdevario make sensible upper-level company, while anything that feeds aggressively at the bottom does not.