Peacock Goby Care Guide - Aquarium Setup, Diet & Breeding

The Peacock Goby is a colourful freshwater goby with a slender body, rounded fins and an expressive, slightly oversized head. Its body is typically bluish-grey to reddish-brown, marked with orange or red flecks, while the tail features the distinctive dark eyespot that gives the species its common name. Mature males often develop especially vivid colours and a fuller profile around the head.

These gobies are active but generally peaceful, spending much of their time perching on plants, wood, rocks and other surfaces before making short, purposeful movements through the aquarium. They are observant fish with individual personalities and often become more confident when kept in a small social group.

In the wild, Peacock Gobies inhabit shaded tropical waterways with gentle flow and plenty of submerged cover. Their natural surroundings may include leaf litter, branches, aquatic vegetation and rocky hiding places, creating a broken landscape in which the fish can retreat and survey their surroundings.

Although they are sometimes sold as solitary “gobies”, they are social fish that display interesting interactions within a group. Males may posture toward one another, particularly when establishing breeding territories, but serious aggression is uncommon when the fish have adequate space and shelter. Their striking appearance and manageable adult size have made them a popular choice for peaceful planted aquariums.

Peacock Gobies are native to freshwater habitats in Papua New Guinea, an island country north of Australia in Oceania. They occur in clear, slow-moving streams, small rivers and associated forest waterways.

A group of Peacock Gobies should be kept in an aquarium of at least 60 litres, with a footprint around 60 × 30 cm or larger. Use gentle filtration and moderate flow, leaving calm areas where the fish can rest and feed. A fine sand or smooth small-grain substrate is suitable, along with dense planting, driftwood, rounded stones, leaf litter and several small caves or spawning shelters. Keep the aquarium securely covered, as gobies can jump when startled, and provide open areas as well as broken lines of sight.

Peacock Gobies reach a maximum adult length of about 7.5 cm (3 inches). Males are usually larger and more robust than females, although individual size varies.

Peacock Gobies are primarily carnivorous and do best on a varied diet of appropriately sized meaty foods. Offer high-quality frozen or live foods such as bloodworms, daphnia, brine shrimp, mosquito larvae and other small aquatic invertebrates, supplemented with a good sinking micro-pellet where accepted. They can be deliberate feeders, so ensure that food reaches them rather than being consumed entirely by faster tankmates.

Peacock Gobies are suitable for peaceful community aquariums with similarly sized, gentle fish. Good tankmates include small tetras, rasboras, peaceful danios, smaller Corydoras, kuhli loaches and other calm Australian or New Guinean community species. Avoid large or aggressive fish, boisterous fin-nippers and highly competitive feeders. Adult gobies may eat very small shrimp and newly hatched fry, so they are not ideal companions for breeding colonies of dwarf shrimp or tiny livebearers.

Peacock Gobies readily breed in a mature aquarium when provided with small caves, ceramic tubes or shells for spawning. The female deposits adhesive eggs inside the chosen shelter, and the male usually guards and fans them until they hatch after roughly 7 to 10 days. Remove the parents or raise the fry separately if you want to maximise survival. Newly free-swimming fry need infusoria or another suitably tiny first food before gradually accepting baby brine shrimp.

Males are generally larger, more brightly coloured and deeper-bodied, often developing a noticeable nuchal hump or fuller forehead as they mature. Females are usually smaller and slimmer, with a rounder abdomen when carrying eggs and often a more prominent yellowish belly.