Oddball_lover101

I've been googling how to setup a brackish tank but i could not find any with enough information, could someone tell me how to setup a brackish tank in steps?

angelfish220

here is the most info I could find http://badmanstropicalfish.com/brackish/brackish.html

... and WELCOME TO FISHLORE!!!

sirdarksol

Welcome to Fishlore!

http://www.fishlore.com/aquariummaga...tank-setup.htm

Here's an article I wrote on the subject. (The article that angelfish sited is good, too. I actually used it for part of setting my own brackish tank up)

In the end, the difficult part of setting a brackish tank up is picking your livestock. Some brackish fish can survive a really wide range of salinity (some guppies, for example, can survive anything from freshwater to full saltwater, though I don't suggest the latter scenario), and others need a certain range. Research the fish that you want, find their preferred salinity, and then find stock that can cohabitate in a certain range.

Oddball_lover101

Thanks for the help, and also have you ever had any experience with bumble bee gobies, i always see them buzzing around in their small little tank in a fish shop, they cost $5 each, kept in freshwater which is bad, most of them have fungus on them, i asked them why they placed them in freshwater not brackish they replied that their are other fish aswell in the tank like glass catfish, so does any one know how to take care of these little gobies and how much salt do they need in their water?

sirdarksol

Seems like light to moderately brackish water is good for bumblebees.

http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/...ee_Gobies.html

This article seems pretty good. The other articles I found at the top of a Google search had info in them that stood out as red flags to me. It was stuff that showed that the writer knew less than he/she thought.

A good companion for bumblebee gobies (and you should have multiple bumblebees, as they like to be in groups) would be a dragon goby. They look vicious, but they're pretty much harmless. They generally eat the same types of things that the little bumblebees do.

They need places to hide, either empty (large) snail and clam shells or bits of PVC pipe.

If you keep them with mollies, be prepared to specially feed the gobies. Mollies are little pigs, and will drive the gobies away from food. If you feed the mollies and then use a pair of forceps to get food directly to the gobies, you could circumvent this, but it is likely a lot of trouble.

Lastly, someone may tell you that glassfish or glass catfish are good companions for gobies. They aren't. Despite popular opinion, glassfish and glass catfish are not brackish fish. They are freshwater fish.

Oddball_lover101

Thanks sirdarksol for the great information, a fish shop close to me sells dragon gobies, bumble bee gobies and some others, they keep them in brackish water which is great. So about how much bumble bee gobies should i keep, i was thinking of getting an 80 litre tank. Also i know dragon gobies grow huge, so i don't think it will be able to survive in a 80 litre tank.

sirdarksol

A wikipedia article I found said that you could house a dozen bumblebees in a 40 liter tank. This would suggest that 2 dozen could go in an 80. This seems a bit excessive to me, but that's only gut instinct. I have no experience with these little guys.
Still they grow 4cm max, so you could easily keep half a dozen for a sparsely-stocked tank. The most I would keep (if it were my tank) would be a dozen.

As for another possibility, I have heard one reference to a figure-eight puffer actually leaving bumblebees alone. Basically, they ignored each other because they recognized each other as a huge danger, if that makes sense. This may have been an oddity, or it may be that figure-eights have some genetic imperative to ignore the bumblebees, and bumblebees have a similar imperative to ignore puffers. I cannot promise that this would work out. Puffers are notoriously violent tankmates, though, like bettas, personality plays a part in their compatibility.

Oddball_lover101

Do you know any other fish (besides dragon gobies) that could live with bumble bee gobies, and can bumble bee gobies live a brackish tank with the gravity at 1.005?

sirdarksol

The other brackish fish that I know of (mollies and guppies) risk being attacked by the gobies, and at the same time will make feeding the gobies difficult.

You could look into archerfish. They're brackish, and I don't know how energetic they are when feeding, but I do know that they prefer the top of the tank, while the bumblebees like the bottom, meaning that scraps between the two are unlikely.