Brackish Plants

[jtumbleweed]

This is my first fresh/brackish tank, I've been keeping a reef tank for a while now, and of course when my wife saw GSPs at the LFS she fell in love and we had to get two of them. I cycled a freshwater planted tank I traded for from a friend to a SG of about 1.007 and brought the fish home. I searched the forums here and only found about three posts about brackish water plants from two years ago. Obviously most of the plants that were in the tank are starting to die, and I need to start replacing them with brackish plants, which I assumed would be as easy as going down to the LFS and picking up a few. Its three weeks later now and I am having a hell of a time finding anything brackish let alone anyone who actually knows anything about brackish water tanks. What do you guys use for plants when your SG is between 1.005 and 1.018? I thought I was doing everything right, but then I find out that I can't find brackish plants anywhere. What is everyone else doing when their puffers are small before they are moved up to marine (in a few years)?

[Agnate]

Okay, two things. Plants that tend to do well in brackish environments mainly include Java Fern and Java Moss. It's not to say that they WILL survive, but they're often found in brackish environments, so they stand a better chance than the rest.

HOWEVER!

Now that you have two loving GSPs, you might start to notice that hunks of plants and sometimes plastics will go missing. It's because these lovely little critters like nibbling and breaking things. So, if you get those beautiful Java Moss and Fern to grow in your tank, be prepared for the little guys to put tiny little holes all over the leaves.

What size of tank do you have the two GSPs in? They require a minimum of 30 gallons each as they get older, and eventually your tank will be around an SG of 1.018 (like you mentioned), so I'm not sure if you're going to find an easy brackish water plant that will survive.

Might be worth investing in some life-like silk plants and avoid the mess of replacing live plants all the time.

Just to note, I haven't actually kept brackish plants, but that's what I've heard about from most people who mention it. Maybe someone else here has had some success with other plants in brackish tanks.

Hope that helped some, and good luck with the little fellahs!

[jtumbleweed]

Yeah, reading up on them I noticed that they will be nibbling on things, and thats fine. I was just a second ago thinking I will probably have to get fake plants, which really sucks because I am not a big fan of non-natural environments for my fish. Right now the GSPs are about an inch long, and they are currently in a 30 gallon tank. I know that I will eventually have to get a much larger tank, which is something I told my wife, and she is apparently ok with (since she doesn't maintain either of our tanks...). A long way down the road, when the GSPs are acclimated to marine water (SG 1.024) I will be able to buy marine plants, and utilize live rock and other marine options (probably not coral, if they are nipping at them...) but like I said I need something in the tank to fill it up until then. The more research I do the darker it is looking for live plants as an option for a brackish tank, until I can either afford a mangrove habitat, or the GSPs are marine. I bet marine comes first. Thanks for the input --

[Agnate]

NP! I'm not sure of this, but I've heard that GSPs don't always tolerate each other as they enter adulthood. It probably wouldn't matter if you got a larger tank (such as a 100g+), but it might be easier to pick up a second 30g tank and separate them (later on, of course). Personally, I think big tanks are much sweeter, hehe.

Hope you find something that suites you and your GSPs!

[jtumbleweed]

After I posted this I went out and looked around, and after talking to some of the LFS guys, and realizing I will never find brackish plants, I think I am going to just start a 55 gallon tank with crushed coral, a bunch of rocks for caves, wood, and fake plants. I might as well just do it right, and this tank will last these guys for a long time until I need to worry about separating them.

[jtumbleweed]

I just wanted to update this post in case anyone is having the same trouble I was. Just because no one in your town has ever bothered to read up on brackish water tanks doesn't mean that you can't do one yourself, and the internet is a place that is full of misinformation and people who think they know exactly what is possible and what is not. I talked to a friend since grade school who works at the LFS, and he gave me a few valuable resources to use if I wanted to take the time to research brackish tanks further. One of the sources he gave me was plantgeek.com, which has a specific brackish water plant section for identification. I then went to aquariumplants.com, and they have a section of brackish water plants for sale at seemingly reasonable prices. I spent a few hours looking up what I would need to start a new brackish tank, and if you have even a basic knowledge of planted aquariums, it will all seem very familiar to you. I also decided to go a step further and try to create a biotope of Sri Lanka, or thereabouts in SE Asia/Southern India, apparently a natural habitat for GSPs. I had to go through wikipedia.com to search the scientific names of all the brackish plants listed in the brackish section of plantgeek.com, and find out where these plants were originally from. This took me about an hour, but now I have a list of plants that are somewhat readily available in the aquarium trade that GSPs would feel at home in. I am kind of amazed that, being brand new to GPSs, puffers, and fresh or brackish water entirely (I started with a reef tank),that it only took me a couple of hours researching from home to find what I needed, and that apparently either no one knew this information beforehand, decided not to share it, or didn't see my post in time. After I get this tank set up, find out where I went wrong, and what is working for me, and I will probably think about writing an article on brackish plants, and ways to do a SE Asia Biotope tank since this information is apparently missing from the internet as a whole.

[kxebs]

Is it possible you share the information you've gathered? My wish is also to get some real-life plats growing in my GSP tank..

[Agnate]

My guess (for here) is that it's simply a combination of puffers eating all the plants and (as you said) local towns not knowing a heck of a lot about brackish setups to suggest any specific plants. Personally, I JUST started getting freshwater plants about 6 days ago, and have very little experience in this field. Everything I've heard about brackish plants is second-hand info.

I agree with kxebs in that you should post up the scientific names of brackish plants and possibly some of the conditions you might have read about. I'm sure a moderator/admin will gladly sticky the topic, as it will help a lot of us out with live plant setups. Also, if you post it before your findings, maybe someone else will experiment and you can cross-reference your observations. Just make a topic with the names (both common and scientific) for the plants you found, and leave the description area blank.

I, for one, would gladly try out some live plants in my brackish 28g, so thanks in advance!

[jtumbleweed]

Is it possible you share the information you've gathered? My wish is also to get some real-life plats growing in my GSP tank..

absolutely, I plan on writing something as soon as I have time, I am in the process right now of setting up the new tank, so sometime by the end of week I should have something for everyone.

[jtumbleweed]

My guess (for here) is that it's simply a combination of puffers eating all the plants and (as you said) local towns not knowing a heck of a lot about brackish setups to suggest any specific plants. Personally, I JUST started getting freshwater plants about 6 days ago, and have very little experience in this field. Everything I've heard about brackish plants is second-hand info.

I agree with kxebs in that you should post up the scientific names of brackish plants and possibly some of the conditions you might have read about. I'm sure a moderator/admin will gladly sticky the topic, as it will help a lot of us out with live plant setups. Also, if you post it before your findings, maybe someone else will experiment and you can cross-reference your observations. Just make a topic with the names (both common and scientific) for the plants you found, and leave the description area blank.

I, for one, would gladly try out some live plants in my brackish 28g, so thanks in advance!

This is a good idea, and it is exactly what I will do when I get some time. I hope this will help everyone who had hopes of having a live tank rather then thinking that they had to use fake plants. Also, I have had my GSPs in a converted freshwater tank with plants that were noted as hardy (and possibly could withstand brackish) for about three weeks now, and from what I see, if they do eat the plants, its not going to cause them to die, or stop growing. I have never seen my GSPs do little more than nip a plant while looking for blood worms, and I think that based on a lack of information, everyone assumes that the GSPs will decimate their plants. If anything, I think something like scats, which are mentioned as being able to live with GSPs, would do much more damage than the GSPs themselves. I will have something for everyone soon!

[SpockthePuffer]

I had live plants in with my GSP for a short while, his biting of them never killed them, there were just a few holes punched through the leaves. And as for wanting a very realistic looking tank, many of the plastic plants they sell these days are quite nice and realistic. I have seen pictures of tanks that I was positive they were real but they were fake! He also likes to take bites of the fake plants but he never actually bites through them (I think he realizes that they are not very yummy!)

Also, I think I've read that GSP don't bite coral like other puffers, I believe someone on here has their GSP in with corals but maybe I'm just making things up!

[jtumbleweed]

I had live plants in with my GSP for a short while, his biting of them never killed them, there were just a few holes punched through the leaves. And as for wanting a very realistic looking tank, many of the plastic plants they sell these days are quite nice and realistic. I have seen pictures of tanks that I was positive they were real but they were fake! He also likes to take bites of the fake plants but he never actually bites through them (I think he realizes that they are not very yummy!)

Also, I think I've read that GSP don't bite coral like other puffers, I believe someone on here has their GSP in with corals but maybe I'm just making things up!

I agree, some tanks containing fake plants look amazing, and if my great experiment fails, then that is what I will have to do. The thing is, I started out with a reef tank, so I am really big on natural 'Berlin' style methods of filtration; on my reef tank I just use aggressive skimming and live rock for filtration. I also could never imagine myself buying something like fake coral decorations, or fake plants for that matter, for any tank I owned unless to had to like in the case of the GSP killing the plants. With a reef tank, I have become used to having to do constant water changes, dosing chemicals, and just general fretting about the water and what is in it. I spend a lot of time getting things right, and making the quality of the tank close to the quality that the livestock would be used to in the wild. I think that doing a brackish planted tank is akin to something like a reef tank, constant maintenance and checking of water parameters, dosing chemicals if needed, and things of that nature. I think people look at a brackish tank as too much work, confusing due to lack of knowledge of LFS employees, expensive, and difficult. Speaking from a coral stand point, $6.99 for a plant from a LFS is basically a huge bargain, and even if I have to order it and pay $21 something for shipping, is still about a third of the cost of a piece of shipped coral, of course I will have to order a lot of plants, but the shipping stays affordable with plants. I just don't think people who are into freshwater systems want to bother with something more difficult, and I am in a unique position where I started in something that is considered more difficult, and am moving laterally into something similarly difficult, but different. This may seem like a digression, but Ive been staying up all night thinking about how to make this work, so when someone gives me an opportunity to talk about it, I take it.

Also, reading up on GSPs on fishbase.org, it is starting to look like the age old 'spawn in freshwater, migrate through out life into open ocean', is looking a little thin. It looks like GSPs spend their entire lives moving back and forth between brackish and freshwater. Of course over a period of years, seeing as how GSPs can live for a decade or more, people can slowly acclimate them to full marine water (SG 1.021-1.024). This does not necessarily mean that they actually ever live in that kind of an environment in the wild, but that they adapted to the water that their owners have placed them in. After researching a bit more, I feel that I will never have a tank that is ever at a SG of over maybe 1.015. Obviously brackish water SG does not stay the same, and I could change between 1.005 and 1.015 using water changes, and the GSP should be happy with it, granted I only change the salinity a bit at a time, but with doing weekly water changes, this should be no problem. So to answer your statement, I don't know if GSPs would nip coral, but with my experience with coral, anything that has the option of being a nipper would not be in my tank. Also, in my opinion GSPs would probably never come into contact with coral, and therefore would ruin my biotope idea, so I won't be doing that anyway. It would be interesting to see if someone is keeping their GSP with coral, id like to see that.

[blanketman]

on topic: brackish plants. I've startet up a brackish tank and it's been cycling for a week now. I've put in some plants which according to http://www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=143235 should do fine up to 1.005 SG. my tank is currently 1.008 and none of the plants look good after this first week, only the Java Moss still looks alive and kicking.

anyway, I'm not giving up on the melting plants (Cryptocoryne, Hygrophila and Cabomba), and I'll put in a Crinum later today. plan to buy a Java Fern anytime soon as well.

any results worth posting I'll post.

[jtumbleweed]

on topic: brackish plants. I've startet up a brackish tank and it's been cycling for a week now. I've put in some plants which according to http://www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=143235 should do fine up to 1.005 SG. my tank is currently 1.008 and none of the plants look good after this first week, only the Java Moss still looks alive and kicking.

anyway, I'm not giving up on the melting plants (Cryptocoryne, Hygrophila and Cabomba), and I'll put in a Crinum later today. plan to buy a Java Fern anytime soon as well.

any results worth posting I'll post.

I can't believe I couldn't find this brackish posting when I was looking for info, it would have been a big help and helped me avoid talking to LFS employees who thought I was an idiot for even trying this. You know I did try to bring my salinity up way too fast in a 15 gallon planted tank about three weeks ago when I got the puffers, and most of the plants started to melt, even the ones that are supposed to be able to stand brackish water. Now I realize that it was pretty dumb to just dump plants that have always been in freshwater into a tank with a SG of 1.008 or so. I think that the best thing to do is to raise the salinity very slowly over a period of maybe even a couple of months, and done slow enough, I think you could even get some hardy freshwater plants to adapt to saltier environments. I just started my new tank a few days ago, and I am going to cycle it as a freshwater tank, and then bring the SG up slowly. You might want to think about doing some water changes on your tank with freshwater, I did about a third of the water a day on my old tank to acclimate the puffers back to freshwater so I can transfer them into their new home. This might help your plants out, and then you can raise the SG up more slowly. Oddly enough, my Cryptocoryne Crispatula died almost instantly at a SG of 1.008, and that was the one I thought might do ok. On the other hand, I put some Vallineria Spiralis in their thinking it would die as well, and it actually was doing ok. It didn't look great, the leaves were getting a bit brown around the edges, but it made it long enough to get into the new tank for now for filtration until the tank cycles and I start getting native GSP plants.

Note: I am still going to post some stuff here for people who might want to get into brackish planted, but with the storms in California, and being a contractor, I have been very busy repairing homes. Hopefully I will get around to it over the weekend, but the link above is a huge help anyway, also http://www.plantgeek.com has a brackish plants section, and you can get a lot of them at your LFS, but like I said, bringing those plants up to 1.005+ should be a slow process.