The Puffer Forum

Several months ago I posted about trying to setup a 40 gallon brackish tank (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=30441), well I realized that I never posted the end product. So here it is.

Tank: 40 gallon acrylic TruVu
Flora: Java Moss, Java Fern, Anubius Nana
Fauna: 4 Platies + 2 babies, 4 bbg, 2 nerites, 1 sneaky ghost shrimp and of course the Figure 8 puffer.
Decorations: White sand from Home Depot, Plastic tree stump, misc aquarium rock, flagstone

Its currently at about 1.003 or 1.004 salinity. I started with 5 platies but one disappeared, i'm not sure if the puffer attacked or it died then was finished off. But there are 2 baby platies born in the tank and growing up pretty well on their own so far. Hope everyone likes it.

Thanks,
Chris



With LED moon/mood lighting.

Love the decor!

Looks good!

This looks really nice .

Thanks everyone. I'm pretty pleased with it so far. It'll be interesting to see how it changes over time.

-Chris

Gorgeous setup! Love the moon lights!

how long have the plants been in brackish water? are they doing well? id love to do figgys tank with all live plants, but dont want to waste money on having them die from being put in brackish.

hadla wrote:how long have the plants been in brackish water? are they doing well? id love to do figgys tank with all live plants, but dont want to waste money on having them die from being put in brackish.

Javaferns seem to do pretty well in low brackish from what I've read but I have no hands on experience. The anubias I've had also did pretty good in low brackish water, but others, like pufferpunk, have reported their anubias melted when the salt was added, so mayhaps its just a few anubias species. I don't know of any floating plants that do well in brackish water but moss seems to do okay in low brackish too, though again, no hands on experience, I am still waiting for my christmas moss to arrive.

Hadla, I wish I could give you a definite answer but I don't really know. I got all of those plants back in Jan '12 and put them in freshwater, since the puffer was in fresh when I got him. Then slowly increased salinity to about 1.004 over the course of a few months. At least I thought I was increasing the salinity, my hydrometer said so but when I got a refractometer it said I was at 1. So I really am not sure how long they've been in brackish and at what levels. It is currently at 1.003 and has been for a couple of months. The Java fern is doing well. Anubius is so so, some of it looks great and some of it is dropping leaves. I have a tiger lotus and some sag just to see what happens; both of those look pretty sad.

I should mention there is no addition of CO2 and the lighting on top is 2 coralife T5 full spectrum 21 watt bulbs. Hope this helps somewhat.


-Chris

How did you calibrate your refractometer?

Distilled water according to the directions that came with it. Since there was such a large discrepancy I took a sample of water to a nearby petstore for a second opinion. They confirmed that it was at 1 or so close you couldn't tell. Either the hydrometer was way off or I wasn't using it right.

-Chris

If you really want it to be exact, better to use refractometer calibration solution:
http://www.thatpetplace.com/sybon-stand ... w={keyword}

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-12/rhf/index.php