Is Brackish Hard To Keep?

crackmonkey · Sep 1, 2005

Is it more towards the marine upkeep or tropical? How much salt do you need to put in, no where near as much as marine? Theres some great Brackish puffers I want and I was thinking about setting up a brackish tank because it'll be alot cheaper than marine, or is it? Do you have to have some equipment that u would find in marine such as skimmer ect...? Or is it just the tropical setup exept with a little salt?

CFC · Sep 3, 2005

Keeping brackish fish can be as easy or as difficult as you choose to make it, as with all fish keeping if you do regular maintainance, keep your fish in suitably sized tanks and feed them the right diet then brackish is no more difficult than freshwater.
The ammout of salt used depends on the fish you are keeping, low end brackish species such as figure 8 puffers and bumble bee gobies only need a few tablespoons of salt per gallon to bring the SG up to where they like it where as high end brackish fish such as shark cats, scats and monos require almost marine concentrations. Its a bit more than "a little salt" with even a 10g tank taking in the region of 30 tablespoons of salt for a light brackish tank but its not as much as used in marine.
Brackish tanks are cheaper than marine tanks in that you dont need special lighting or expensive live rock, though in brackish tanks with a SG above 1.006 a protein skimmer is usefull, particularly if you are keeping larger fish which produce more waste.

pufferfanaticuk · Sep 4, 2005

Hi,

I keep one brackish tank for my figure 8 puffer, i really find this to be no different to keeping a tropical tank in terms of difficulty, i keep the salinity level of the water at around 1008 which envolves me putting in around 6-7 tablespoons full of water per bucket.

Really though i would like to know exactly what a skimmer would do to the water in this situation and if it would have any benefits to the upkeep of my tank. I think also i would like to know if anyone has had any real success with plants inside a brackish water tank and if so what the plants are called. mine all seem to wither and die with a few weeks.

Thanks

CFC · Sep 4, 2005

A protein skimmer helps by removing organic proteins from fish waste from the water before it goes through the filtration cycle thus not being converted to nitrate, this means longer periods can be left between water changes which saves money on salt, a big plus with large tanks.

The only commonly available plant that will grow well in brackish water above 1.003 is java fern.

nmonks · Sep 4, 2005

If you're prepared to hunt, there are uncommon (but certainly available) species that will do well in brackish. Some strains of Cryptocoryne ciliata are actually more common in brackish than freshwater for example. Other species confirmed to inhabit brackish waters in the wild include Bacopa monnieri, Samolus valerandi, Echinodorus tenellus, Lilaeopsis brasiliensis, Crinum calamistratum, and Crinum pedunculatum.

Note that at least some of these are "difficult" plants at the best of times, and while they will tolerant salty water, are demanding with regard to soil nutrients and lighting.

There's more here and here.

As a rule of thumb, any plant that does well in hard, alkaline water is worth a shot too. I've had good results in slightly brackish (SG < 1.005) water with things like Vallisneria gigantea and Cryptocoryne wendtii.

Having said all of this, if your plan is to keep large or potentially herbivorous brackish water fish such as scats or green chromides, you may as well skip on the plants. None of these plants will go much over 1.005. An exception is Samolus valerandi that supposedly tolerates up to almost fully marine conditions -- salt concentrations of up to 30 ppt! (See Frank Schaefer's Aqualog book for this.) Equally, vegetarian fish will simply eat any green plants, with the exception perhaps of Java ferns, though scats have been known to even eat this (see Baensch's Aquarum Atlas no. 1, where the authors report a scat died after eating Java fern).