Bbg Habitat

[thijs]

Hi Folks,
After 10 years of not owning an aquarium i will restart my old hobby again. I have obtained a 200L aquarium and i want to keep BBG's in it. As an ecologist i prefer to imitate the natural habitat of these fish. But here's the problem: What is the natural habitat? I have searched the internet and the books but it is nowhere to be found (even Neale's book lacks this info!). (The plan is to keep the generally sold B. doriae).

 

[nmonks]

The problem is that there isn't "one" habitat; various species are found in various places, and some are found in both fresh and brackish water. In some cases, freshwater habitats include blackwater streams similar to those we associate with discus.

In practise, keeping BBGs in soft, acidic water doesn't seem to work well. For whatever reason, they do best when kept in at-least hard water, and ideally slightly brackish water. This isn't uncommon; mollies are another example of a fish that does best in slightly brackish water even though it's a freshwater fish in the wild. Figure-8 puffers are another example, and don't seem to be all that common in brackish water. Adult GSPs are more common in freshwater rivers than estuaries, despite the fact they invariably do better in brackish, even saltwater, conditions in aquaria.

So, bottom line, it isn't as simple as replicating "the wild" because at least some species are sensitive to nitrate, pH variation, or a variety of other factors best regulated under one specific set of conditions.

Cheers, Neale