About Me

[makemineirish]

I am in the process of simultaneously and slowly stocking two decent sized aquariums. In the past, I have been an anal retentive biotope aquarist and eschewed popular choices in favor of more esoteric ones (Indian mudskipper community with brackish tankmates and a tidal flow anyone?).

This time around, I am embracing the chaos (in a controlled, anal retentive fashion). Both the 150 and 220 are planned out as the ever popular, but unattempted by me, planted community discus tanks. I am keeping both at similar water parameters and stocking slowly.

While both are intended to house discus, the majority of tankmates will be different in each as I am not trying to reproduce the same community. Rather, I want the freedom to move fish between tanks if necessary and hope to get by with a single 36g, bare-bottom quarantine/spawning/growth tank.

It's not biotope and not purist. I am hoping to experiment a bit with what are considered acceptable tankmates for discus. I don't intend to challenge any of the proven water parameters for the various fish. Rather, I am attempting to shed my purist principles and be moderately open-minded to species found on other continents with like requirements.

I stumbled onto this thread while googling for others' anecdotal experience to serve as a springboard for my own research. I registered to share a tidbit of information and ended up actually including details in my profile.

 

[redsea]

Welcome to Aquarium Advice. Thanks for joining us!

 

[FishGeek97]

Hey, where did you get your mudskippers? i've beem thinking of setting a brackish tank up with them and some figure 8 puffers, but i can't find mudskippers anywhere!

 

[melosu58]

Welcome aboard. We are glad you found us here at AA.

 

[ocminpin]

Welcome!

 

[makemineirish]

Mudskippers

Hey, where did you get your mudskippers? i've beem thinking of setting a brackish tank up with them and some figure 8 puffers, but i can't find mudskippers anywhere!

I had the same problem when I conceptualized the tank. I live in Austin, TX and have occasionally gotten lucky at my LFS. Right now, they have a big, beautiful African mudskipper. However, the most reliable source that I found was Brackishwater Fish. I opted to do a larger community of the smaller Indian mudskippers rather than having a single large African.

The ones that I had are currently out of stock, but Frank has always been prompt in his responses and exceedingly helpful to me. He attempts to get unusual options and is also a great resource for some brackish choices that rarely show up at the fish store. There is another species of smaller mudskipper available on his site right now that is comparably small at maturity.

If you are looking for a larger species, Wetspot has some available both on their website and on Aquabid (AquaBid.com - Item # fw1330043507 - Blue Spotted Dragon Mudskipper WILD - Ends: Thu Feb 23 2012 - 06:31:47 PM CDT). This seller is not unethical in my experience, but is a large scale wholesaler. He imports and ships with very little quarantine or rehabilitation practices. Just know that and be prepared to quarantine and coddle them yourself. If it were me, I would order a couple of extra and sell any unneeded specimens to the LFS if they all made it.

I hope this gives you a few leads to start your own tank. If you want to go whole hog, mangroves growing out of the top of the aquarium are exceedingly cool.

Good luck.