The Puffer Forum

OK so I've come across two different species and I'm not sure what one is the ONLY brackish one and which is the brackish/fresh

Brachygobius xanthozona <--- I think this is the brackish only
Brachygobius doriae <--- I think this is the brackish/fresh

my tank is currently at 1.002 is this enough to sustain the braskish only species if it is the one I buy? I will be makeing it 1.008 over time(.002 upgrade every week blah blah)

Ive found a place where I can buy the amount I want for a very decent pricing and I just want to make sure I wont kill them once I do get them.

I believe the only species commonly available is the brackish one. I have not heard of this freshwater species.

Brachygobius doriae is the one live aquaria sells

Brachygobius xanthozona is the ones I am thinking of buying.

they also differ a little in appearance. one of them has unbroken strips and one has non unbroken strips

I believe the ones with solid stripes are the brackish species. not postive though.

i was looking into this the other day, after i lost my f8 as i want to make his old tank fw. This is what i found:

The Brachygobius xanthozona has perfect unbroken black stripes and is best suited for brackish, but will tolerate fresh water much better than the other type.

The Brachygobius nunus has less well banded stripes, and occasionally black spots or broken stripes. It is not very tolerant of a fresh water environment. Technically its common name is the Golden Banded Goby, although I have not once seen these two species clearly distinguished when on sale in fish stores.

Hope this helps!

I heard, it is almost impossible to tell, and it has something to do with how many scales they have. But even if that's not true, it is still very hard to tell, and it is likely the LFS do not really know themselves.

riggers wrote:I heard, it is almost impossible to tell, and it has something to do with how many scales they have.

This is the only real way to tell.
For the most part the ones with unbroken bands will work though

Hehe I just looked for where it was I read it, and it was you who said about the scales on the DP forum! I just thought that was amusing for some reason. It was the thread where that guy was trying to keep:

1 puffer
1 yoyo
1 hillstream loach
4 tetras
1 chinese algae eater
1 crayfish
2 bumble bee gobies
2 kuhlis

In a 15 gal, if you remember. I wonder what ever happened to those fish.

That is pretty amusing lol.
I believe they all actually worked out, or at least most of them did.

Wow. Well that's good for the fish I guess, I just wonder how happy they were. Anyway so there you go Boris_puffer, that is how you tell. Even though that's not quite what you originally asked . If you have any doubts or other question, nmonks will know the answer I'm sure.

thats what I was thinking. so I ordered 10 last night. probably wont get here until Tuesday since its the weekend they wont ship.

So how big's the tank and is there anything else in it?

tank is 50g, they're going in with my f8's hopefully hey will live together peacefully *crosses fingers*

Why dont you get some orange chromis. They look nice in brackish tanks.

if you're only keeping figure 8's and bumblebees then you don't have to take the salinity to 1.008, most people on this forum seem to recommend 1.005