Fresh to Brackish conversion, use sea water?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

The Editor

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jan 18, 2011
Messages
147
Location
Bath, UK
Currently our empty 29g is completely fresh, we want to go brackish (to around SG=1.005 - 1.010).

We live in a sea side town, with access to a fishing boat.

To cut the cost of buying in marine salt, we're thinking about doing PWCs using sea water mixed with tap to achieve the desired salt content.

We have a TMC V2 refractometer in the post to us to next weekend I'll be popping down to the seafront to take measurements.

My main question is whether anyone else here uses sea water they collect themselves, and whether people think it's a good/bad idea (ideally why you think that too please!).

Would mixing chlorinated tap water in with the sea water kill off any unwanted hitch hikers? I was thinking about mixing it up and then leaving to stand for 24 hours or so before adding dechlorinator and using it..

Also to I'm thinking it might be easy to get a few 5gal water containers and fill them up with sea water, then just store them in the shed taking the water we need from them when we need it. Is sea water ok sitting stagnant?

I'm sure I'll have more Q's but I think that'll do for now!

I've posted this question to other forums as well so I'm sure some of you may have seen/helped me elsewhere, if so thank you! I'm just cruising around trying to gather as many peoples opinions and experiences before I do anything!
 
I dont think it would kill all the hitch hikers and you never know what might be in the water - Oil from a boat, Gas. With a small tank any of that can kill everything super fast, And for a 29 gallon tank you really wont need that much salt at all. For such a small tank I dont think it would be worth it and I would not recommend it.
 
Thanks for the reply!

Yea I agree with you, having had a think about it and after checking out the local water cleanliness scores, I went ahead and ordered a box of marine salt...

Problem solved!
 
I agree, you have disease and pollutants to worry about. If it helps I bought a big (20lb maybe) bag of salt mix in September. As of then, I was running a 20 gallon brackish tank at around 1.012 SG, doing a 50% water change weekly, and I was setting up a 30 gallon brackish tank. I had both running since around November, as I said weekly changes on the 20 and maybe a monthly change while cycling for the 30. The 20 has gone back to fresh now that the 30 is finished now, but even after running both for a few months I still have more than half of that bag left. For my weekly 50% change on the 30 I use maybe a cup of salt mix to keep it between 1.012-1.015. Salt isn't a huge expense if you just buy a bulk size in the first place. Back when I bought the small boxes every couple months, it was a little more expensive.
 
What type of fish are you planning on keeping? Just interested

A pair of Figure Eight puffers.. We've got them on order with our LFS...

The tanks been sat empty, cycling with ammonia since December.. It's been ready since January (partially seeded), but we've not been sure on stocking etc.. Then we absolutely fell in love with a MBU puffer at the shop, knew we couldn't have it so decided to go with F8s instead!
 
Thats what I was hoping you would say, Such a cool fish (y)


A pair of Figure Eight puffers.. We've got them on order with our LFS...

The tanks been sat empty, cycling with ammonia since December.. It's been ready since January (partially seeded), but we've not been sure on stocking etc.. Then we absolutely fell in love with a MBU puffer at the shop, knew we couldn't have it so decided to go with F8s instead!
 
Plan to give them snails from our guppy tank (we have a live in population of ramshorns), as well as shelled shrimp, freshwater clams, bloodworms and other meaty food, maybe some freshly harvested shellfish from the rockpools etc down on the beach, I'd quite like to try collecting them some fresh food from the great outdoors..

We'll try them on a variety of shelled/crunchy/meaty things, see what they take to!

Edit:

The current set up:

mR7W3.jpg


The dracaena stalks have since been removed, stupid non-aquatic species...
 
Just be careful of collecting foods from tainted water! If the water isn't clean enough for you to want to use it in your tank, don't feed them food out of it either. I have green spotted puffers myself. The figure 8's are adorable too.
 
Just be careful of collecting foods from tainted water! If the water isn't clean enough for you to want to use it in your tank, don't feed them food out of it either. I have green spotted puffers myself. The figure 8's are adorable too.

Very true. I may end up par-boiling anything I scavenge, that'd at least help kill any parasites it may be carrying...

GSPs were my first puffer love! But as soon as I realised how much room they needed I knew it was out of the question for the time being... A pair of fat bellied F8s will be enough for now!
 
Just took some pictures of mine before and during feeding them a clam. So cute! Somehow all the pics uploaded upside down though... Sorry.
 
Cool! How old are they?

Have they gone full SW yet or are you still brackish?

Is that some sort of Celtic symbol on the background?!?
 
They are a little over a year old and have nearly doubled in size since I got them as tiny little babies in Dec '10. I keep them around 1.015 right now, once they hit around 3 inches I'm going to upgrade their tank and bring them up to around 1.020, and then to full marine. And yes, I painted the tank with a tree of life design and some Celtic knotwork style vines. There's a full shot. I have java fern and mangrove seedlings growing in there too.
 
Very true. I may end up par-boiling anything I scavenge, that'd at least help kill any parasites it may be carrying...

GSPs were my first puffer love! But as soon as I realised how much room they needed I knew it was out of the question for the time being... A pair of fat bellied F8s will be enough for now!

You can just freeze the clams for a few days to kill all parasite. There a bit of controversy about feeding raw food or cooked food, but most feed raw. I'd always thought to keep it raw since most food put in the wild is not cooked.
 
Terrance said:
You can just freeze the clams for a few days to kill all parasite. There a bit of controversy about feeding raw food or cooked food, but most feed raw. I'd always thought to keep it raw since most food put in the wild is not cooked.

Most food? Are fish cooking dinner?
 
Back
Top Bottom