Brackish Q

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fishboy444

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Joined
Sep 20, 2009
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canada quebec
If I ever wanted a brackish could I put knight and bumblebee gobies in a ? size tank?Also what is it like 2 tbsp. of salt/gal.?:new-alien:
 
I have no clue on the size of tank you will need for those fish. However, to address the second part of your post, in order to make brackish water you have to use marine salts and will need a hydrometer to measure the salinity, reg aquarium salt is NaCl and does not have the minerals needed for brackish conditions.
 
I keep our's at a specific gravity of 1.004. Which roughly equals 2 tablespoons of salt per gallon. We use reef salt with calcium. We have mollies, indian glass fish (unpainted of course) ghost shrimp, and bumble bee gobys. (Tatsu the dragon goby disappeared) with plans for a few knights eventually. Bumble bee's rarely get over 2 inches long but they like having their own territories. You can mix knights and bumble bees. Knights get about 3 inches.


Now on to tank size. Personally, the bigger the tank the better. It's easier to maintain a larger tank than a smaller one. Larger tanks are more forgiving if you don't change the water once a week compared to a smaller tank going all ammonia crazy on you. We dedicated an 80g for brackish. It has plenty of space for each fish to claim his/her terf. A 40g or 55g is what I would recommend if the thought of a large tank doesn't sit well. You would have plenty of room for decor.


In a 40g I would go with no more than 4 bumble bees and 4 knights. Just because they do tend to quarrel amongst themselves.

In a 55g I would go 6/6.

Here are some links that I used when researching brackish. Hope they help.
Starting a Brackish Aquarium, what you need and what you can keep.
Introduction to Brackish Aquariums

These for the fish profiles:
Brackish Fish: Brackish Water Fish for Brackish Aquariums and Tanks
How to keep bumblebee gobies, Brachygobius, with pictures
Miscellaneous goby pictures

If you want to go with live plants:
BracPlants
PlantGeek.net - Plant Guide
 
Figure 8's can be tricky. Some people have good luck with them and they get along fine with the other fish and some people have trouble with them being aggressive. We wanted to go with them in our's but it's a 50/50 on the personality. It could very well work depending on how big of a tank, how many hiding places for the other fish and the puffers attitude. You can give it a shot and hopefully it goes well.

As for the way you want to go, that's all up to your personal tastes. Since all our other tanks are based on natural themes I had the idea of going with an oriental theme for our brackish. Since I wanted dragon gobys, I wanted something to pull it together and have balinese decor. You can see it in my albums.


Personally I'm not one for fake plants and bright gravels. With dragon gobys a sand or loose substrate is best since they like to burrow. We went with 3M black color quartz T grade, they also have S grade which is more sandlike. But as I said, it's really up to what you want to put in there and the desired effect.
 
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