Figure8 tank

[Redspotter]

Hi
I'm trying to finishing up my future f8 tank. I've started it up three weeks ago, with water and filter material of my other fw tank. A few endlers are living in there now till the puffers will come. It's a rio125, has a eheim cannister 2213 (440l/h) and a eheim aquaball 2210(550l/h) filter in it. Today the BBG's are coming, if the lfs has them. I 'll take about 6 af them
Here's a picture of the tank, currently fw. I've worked with real plants, they all should be able to handle BW.

Please say what you think of it

[Hilly]

Very nice setup.

[taureandragon76]

Looks good, are you planning on switching over to brackish?

[Redspotter]

Thanks for your reactions.
Yes I'm planning on switching to brackish, but I've to wait till the f8's are coming, then I'm planning on slowly making a salinity of 1.005
Yesterday somebody picked up my endlers and traded them for a lot of javafern and moss.
6 BBG are now living in the tank till the puffers come. They seem very happy, swimming around a lot, I wasn’t expecting that from them. Unfortunately I forgot to bring live food for them, so I tried some (un)frozen bloodworms, some of them eat some. But then I put a shrimp pellet in there and at least two of them went nuts, they really like those.
Here another picture of the tank with a lot of javafern and moss, I really reading up a lot about how the plants have the best change to survive brackisch, tips?

BBG eating shrimp pellet


greetings

[crazedpuffer]

Nice setup!

[kimmers318]

I am no expert by far, and have not yet kept fig 8's either, but if I am not mistaken, BBG's do well in BW, and alot of people have had luck with them with Fig8's also. You might want to check on that, you may be able to keep those adorable little goomers.

[taureandragon76]

My goby's and F8's get along great. For your plants take your time getting the sg up to 1.005 I did mine over a period of about 3 weeks raising the sg by .002 each week and most of my plants have melted away and they are java fern and moss. So what I would suggest is try doing is even slower than I did mabye .001 every week or even .0005 every week. From the research I have done it seems that you need to acclimatize your plants very slowly. I had beautiful pieces of java fern that had been in that tank for quite some time but since switching to brackish there is not alot of it left, it just all melted away

[Redspotter]

writing fault of me.
The plan is of keeping them indeed with the puffers to come.
I'm looking for some baby F8 so I can take about 6 to 8 weeks to increase the saltinety to 1.005.
By what lenght / age they should be atleast at a saltinity of 1.005??

[Pufferpunk]

The nitrifying bacteria that is in there now, is only enough to support the BBGs. When you get the puffers (especially if you plan on adding both at once), I suggest dumping a bag of Bio-Spira into your filter to support their extra bioload.

[Redspotter]

I don't think I can get bio-Spira here in the Netherlands. I've set some snails free in the tank and do a little overfeeding of the bbg, hoping that will help the developing of good-bacteria

[mikeosoft]

Is that a piece of wood in the first set of pictures? If you're going BW I would take that as it will rot faster in BW.

[Myaj]

I would raise the salinity very, very slowly to let the plants adjust.

I have driftwood in with Frank, who's kept at 1.006 or so. The wood is doing just fine, no rotting at all. Higher levels it probably would, but at F8 levels, quality driftwood will probably hold up better. Dried out, ancient cheap stuff that's been sitting in a store for years probably will fall apart in any brackish though.

[Redspotter]

When I'm raising the saltinity I will keep a close eye on the driftwood.

Myaj do you have any suggestion on how slowly to raise the saltinity??
And a saltinity of 1.005 should work for a F8, right?

[Hilly]

I think with plants it has to be raised a lot slower than what you can do with the fish to let them acclimate properly. Perhaps a couple of tablespoons of marine salt a week dissolved in your water change bucket. Might not show up on a hydrometer or refractometer but you'll know its going in.

[my name is mike]

the plants anchored in the background look awesome -- good luck on raising the sg , you may see some die off , but somethings will survive and make up for the loss in time

you may want to add some hornwort or vals before you start the march up to 1.005 - they are very fast growning plants and will help keep algae in check