The Puffer Forum

I was given this site by a friend and it gives some information about brackish water.

I just thought I share with those who have brackish water puffers.

http://www.iowas.co.uk/Brackish.html

Quote:

"Without doubt, the best type of salt to use in an aquarium is a good proprietary brand of synthetic sea salt, obtainable from most aquatic retailers. A cheaper but a far poorer substitute is ordinary cooking salt and, cheapest of all if you happen to live near the sea, is sea water diluted down with fresh water."

This is IMHO, awful advice. Only the first option given is acceptable.

Quote #2:

"Under no circumstances should you use iodised table salt as this can be very detrimental to fish."

This is contrary to fact.

Quote #3:

"Fish and plants have a tendency to adjust their internal salt levels to those of the surrounding water. Water molecules are small enough to pass through the membrane of cell walls; larger salt molecules are not. This passing of molecules through a membrane is called osmosis. The only way, therefore, for a freshwater fish or plant to maintain body salt levels when placed in brackish or salt water is to expel water, it cannot take on salt. It may sound strange but by expelling body fluid in this way the fish, or plant, can become dehydrated and die."

This paragraph is quite confused to the point of being misleading, plus incorrect in details. Again very poor. I suspect that the writer does not really understan osmotic pressure, osmosis, homeostasis, of anything at all about mineral transport, uptake, or excretion in fish. This is spreading confusion, not clarifying in any way, it is horrible!

At that point I gave up. I would not suggest this site to anyone seeking understanding of brackish water

I was just trying to help. Sorry if it was a bad site.

sassiegemstone, No appology needed, you're not a scientist, like RTR. No harm meant by his comments or your link.

yea, no harm in trying to help, however, thats why RTR's genius is here!

Yup, that's why we keep him around! He's kinda cute too...

Old and bald men who keep puffers and grow bananas ae cute? I had no clue...

sassiegemstone - none of that was aimed at you, but at the site ref'd. Your original post was neutral in tone, so i felt free to be honest about my response to it. We do need to see these sites, to have some idea of what is out there. There are some which are awful (too many) and some which are pretty good.

Have you seen badman's site? it is not perfect, but it os pretty good. Brackish set-up is:

http://badmanstropicalfish.com/brackish/brackish.html

Old and bald men are cute?

Ummm... I'm married to an old bald man!

I'd consider Dr Monks' brackish FAQ essential reading on the subject also.

http://homepage.mac.com/nmonks/aquaria/ ... part1.html