How do you train a lawnmower blennie?

[Matthewdmueller]

I've been having a probelm with my lawnmower blennie. It swims back and forth along the bottom of the front glass kicking up sand and silt all of the time. It does it so much that the glass bottom of the tank is exposed and I have to reach in there and push the sand back into place every couple of days. Does anyone know why it is doing this, or how I can make it stop? It just seems like it wants to get out of the tank but when you come over to the tank to look at it, it swims and hides in the rocks. Because of this I am thinking about removing it and I realy don't want to. Any help or ideas would be great, thanks

[mbeach66]

what kind and how much substrate do you have ? Also it might help to rearrange the rocks to confuse him a little. Has he been doing this since you added him?

[Matthewdmueller]

I have about a 2" live sand bed for substrate and he started to do this after I moved the rocks around. I've had him for a while now but he just started to do this in the last month or so. I rearranged all the rock about 2 months ago.

[mbeach66]

it isn't unusual for this fish to do this action. You probably have noticed that he moves quite sporadically around the tank, its in their nature to do these things. When the kick up the sand it might be frustrating when they dig all the way to the bottom, although it is a good thing that they stir up the sand for the other cleaners to get at. i had a tiger shrimp a little bit ago, he dug tunnels everywhere, overall it was good, but it was a pain to fill in those huge holes. Not really much you can do, they just like to do it! so you might as well get used to it.

[Matthewdmueller]

This makes me sad :(