Mudskippers are a fascinating group of fish that have evolved to lead a largely amphibious lifestyle, and they do this using a clever adaptation to their gill which enables it to function much like a lung. So effective is this adaptation that mudskippers spend around 80-90% of their time out of the water, and they can actually drown if they are unable to leave the water.

Mudskippers are found from West Africa, throughout the Indo-Pacific region, and Northern Australia. They live mainly on tidal mudflats in areas of mangrove swamp with brackish water. Adults can reach a maximum size of about 30cm (although adult sizes vary depending on the particular species).

Care and Maintenance

Mudskippers are generally highly territorial, although they can co-exist in groups if there is plenty of space. Given this fishes need to spend so much time out of water, and aquarium for them should contain lots of easily-accessible "land" areas - ideally about 60-70% of the aquarium's surface area should be devoted to this. An ideal solution would be to provide gently sloping beach areas for the fish to crawl onto, but raised pieces of mopani wood, rocks and even floating pieces of polystyrene will all work. Please bear in mind that these fish have soft fleshy undersides, so decor should not have any sharp edges...

A high level of humidity is vital for the function of the fishes gills when out of water, therefore the aquarium must have tight-fitting condensation covers. The covers have another important function - these fish are capable of powerful jumps and can easily escape from a poorly-sealed aquarium! When feeding my mudskippers, I have seen them jumping nearly 20cm vertically with no "run up" (visualise, if you can, a submarine launching a missile vertically from the surface of the sea, and you are getting close how a hungry mudskipper responds to food held above it!). I have not tried keeping plants with Mudskippers (indeed the choice/availability of brackish-tolerant plants is very limited), but in a suitably large aquarium live mangrove seedlings may be a possibility. These are available from some specialist marine retailers as they can be grown in open-topped refugiums.

The temperature of the water should be maintained at quite a high level - around 27° C seems to work well. As the water level in the aquarium is likely to be quite low in order to accommodate "land" areas, care should be taken to locate the heater in such a way that the mudskippers do not try and climb on it and get burned. Mudskippers are messy fish, so powerful filtration is vital. However care should be taken to ensure that your filtration will work in shallow water - some internal filters will not work laying on their sides, and many externals will struggle to pump water the height of the aquarium 'walls'.

Feeding

These fish have extremely powerful jaws, as their wild diet consists of crustaceans, worms, small fish and insects - basically anything they can find in a mangrove swamp habitat. Dried foods (flake, pellets etc) are completely unsuitable and will probably not even be accepted. I fed my mudskippers frozen bloodworm as a staple diet, but also gave them chunks of prawns and cockles on a regular basis.

They seemed happy enough to accept food from under the water, but definitely preferred to be fed on "land". A word of warning though - those powerful jaws (equipped with sharp teeth), ability to jump vertically and eagerness to reach food quickly meant that I was bitten regularly! This is not really an issue with small Mudskippers, but the larger male I kept regularly drew blood!

Conclusion

If you want to look after a truly fascinating and charismatic group of fishes, the Mudskippers come highly recommended. Provided you give these fish a suitable home (a species tank with plenty of "land" and high humidity levels) and plenty of 'meaty' food, you will be rewarded with many years of pleasure from these incredible animals!