The Puffer Forum

Ill be adding brackish water into my GSP tank and my bumblebee goby tank this week. There are already plants in there. I plant to get the SG to 0.007 after adding 0.002 each week ( the first water change ill take out 50% and add new water with SG of 0.002..will the SG in the tank be 0.002 or lower as theres only 50% BW on the tank. THe next week ill have an SG of 0.004 in the bucket,and wheni take out 50% from the tank will the SG be 0.004 or lower? Do you understand where im coming from from these questions? lol) Back to the plant part. Ive got about 3 watts per gallon on the tank and ive read that most plants will do fien at an SG of 0.007,do i need to acclimate the plants at all?
Many thanks

If you add 50% .002 you would be at 0.001. If you add 50% 0.004 water you would be at alittle over 0.002. I think that would be a fine rate of increase. You will need at least a hydrometer to know when you hit your target though.

I recently unplanted my brackish 0.005 F8 tank as the palnts I had never thrived. I had watersprite, Java Moss, Javaj Fern, Hygrophilia Polysperma. They did not die but always looked kinda fuzzy and never attractive. Hornwort grew great but was kinda boring as the only plant. I think you need slower acclimation for the plants than the fish or bacteria.

I was running 2.5 watts of T5 with DIY Co2. I could not control the algea and was never happy with the look.

The GSPs will eventually have to go to a SG that neither the plants nor the gobies will survive at.

plant acclimation needs to be considerably slower than fish acclimation-- it should be done over a few weeks, starting with no salt at all

3 watts is a lot of light, (especially if its something intense like PCs) so you'd need fast growing plants, co2 or both to out-compete the algae

the biggest problem, as pufferoni said, is the GSP -- it needs full marine eventually and there are no plants that will survive at that level

Can you use any freshwater aquatic plants in a BW set-up as long as the y are acclimatised??

There's a stickied post about brackish plants at the top of the brackish tanks forum, also do a search for brackish plants there's been plenty of posts on this subject.

yes. as far as i know, a lot of the plants mentioned here or considered "brackish safe" are actually freshwater plants that for some reason or another can survive in brackish. only a handfull, java fern for example, naturally occur in brackish environments --- the natural ones tend to "thrive" more in brackish, while some of the freshwater ones just merely "survive"