Bumblebee Goby Salinity

[dburns865]

I have 4 bumblebee gobies in my brackish tank with a couple of balloon mollies and they've been doing great. I recently read if you have at least a 1.010 salinity level, you could have success keeping blue legged hermits in brackish and I wanted to try it. I was wondering how the gobies will do at a range of about 1.010 to 1.014? Will they be okay or is that too high?

 

[nmonks]

They will be fine at SG 1.010. Not so sure about 1.014; while I have heard of them being acclimated to marine conditions, when I tried this out, it wasn't a success. Do remember that many Brachygobius species are basically freshwater fish while the others live in those sorts of streams where there's slight salinity -- SG 1.002-1.005 is the ideal. If you want a goby to live in middling to high salinity situations, then something like a Dragon Goby (Gobioides spp.), Spotted Sleeper (Dormitator maculatus) or Crazyfish (Butis butis) will work much better.

Indeed, because Dragon Gobies and Spotted Sleepers come from the Atlantic coast, they're authentic companions for Mollies as well as the hermit crabs.

Cheers, Neale

I have 4 bumblebee gobies in my brackish tank with a couple of balloon mollies and they've been doing great. I recently read if you have at least a 1.010 salinity level, you could have success keeping blue legged hermits in brackish and I wanted to try it. I was wondering how the gobies will do at a range of about 1.010 to 1.014? Will they be okay or is that too high?

 

[dburns865]

Thank you very much for your help! I went and bought a nice hydrometer today to be more specific than my floating one. After raising the level of salt my fish have started itching themselves though which is worrying me. I went from 1.004 to 1.010 over a period of 3 nights. Once home from work id dump in a cup of salty water every hour or so. Could it be irritating them?

I have 3 bumblebees that are very small and pale, the yellow part is see through with a yellow tinge, then one that is about the size of a guppy that is really bright yellow and black. Would that give any clues as to what species they are and if they'd be okay?

 

[nmonks]

Juvenile BBGs are rather pale, and the yellowy bit can seem little more than off-white. Plus, there are some BBG species that never become very yellow. Putting names on species is hard though, because there are several species traded but very few are correctly identified, and consequently the pictures in books and on the internet are rarely correct.

In any case, I'm still perplexed why your want SG 1.010 if you're only keeping Mollies and BBGs. You don't need anything like that amount of salinity.

Cheers, Neale

 

[dburns865]

Well I also wanted to keep a few clibanarius tricolors in there, which require more. I put in one like 5 days ago to see how he did. Everyone seems to be doing fine so far, no change in behaviour