🐠 Railway Sleeper Goby (Valenciennea helsdingenii)
A Pearly White, Torpedo-Shaped Body With Parallel Orange-Black Stripes • A Deep-Water Rarity • A Timid, Natural Sand-Bed Cleaner
 
📋 The Railway Sleeper Goby, also known as the Sleeper Railway Glider Goby, has an elegant pearly-white, torpedo-shaped body marked with two prominent parallel stripes running horizontally along its length, resembling railway tracks.
It comes from a wide range across the Indo-West Pacific, including Japan, Indonesia, the Great Barrier Reef, the Maldives, Seychelles, and southern Africa, a deep-water fish, found to depths of up to 50 metres, making it an infrequent sight in the aquarium trade. Every Railway Sleeper Goby we ship is feeding well.
A popular natural sand-bed cleaner, this species spends much of its time taking mouthfuls of substrate, passing it through its gill plates to extract microorganisms and food, leaving the sand bed noticeably cleaner and helping manage nuisance cyanobacteria, though in doing so it will leave small mounds of substrate throughout the tank. This species needs a mature, biologically established tank with an open sand bed, as it's sensitive to ammonia and nitrite, and may struggle without an established, food-rich substrate to sift. It's a jumper, so an absolutely secure, tight-fitting lid is essential. It's reef safe with caution, indifferent to live rock and won't disturb corals, but should be kept singly, as it's not compatible with other members of its own genus. It reaches up to 25cm, so a 190L tank suits it well.
 
💡 Highlights
🎨 Pearly Body With Railway-Track Stripes: An elegant, distinctive sand-sifting goby
🏖️ A Natural Sand Cleaner: Aerates substrate and manages nuisance cyanobacteria
💎 A Deep-Water Rarity: Found down to 50 metres, making it infrequent in the trade
🌿 Reef Safe With Caution: Indifferent to live rock, won't disturb corals
⚠️ A Jumping Risk: An absolutely secure, tight-fitting lid is essential