Archer fish question

[cgibby]

i had a group of six in a 70 g cube and they schooled together except for one that would stay towards the back of the tank and chase the others off if they got close they were all about the same size 3" and were kept at 74 with quite a bit of flow in the tank about 12x turnover kept with two goonch (which ended up killing them all and the four more I tried to add which were a bit bigger) two climbing perch and a vulture cat


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[aquatic lover]

Hi,

From someone who kept archer fish (maybe not your species) I would not have current as these fish come from still brackish water and too much movement unsettles them. However they will love over hanging roots and branches on the surface of the fish tank which makes they feel secure. I used to loved feeding live insects and meal worms as the archer would be trained to spit water at me when it was hungry. You will need more aquarium space as all these fish get bigger.

 

[predatorkeeper87]

ok...so is there really a freshwater species of archer? I feel like this is another one of those "ya they can totally live in fresh water!...but they like brackish too!" kinda things..

 

[kno4te]

ok...so is there really a freshwater species of archer? I feel like this is another one of those "ya they can totally live in fresh water!...but they like brackish too!" kinda things..

The Burmese type don't need brackish water. Do fine in plain old freshwater. As opposed to the other archers.



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[kno4te]

Hi,

From someone who kept archer fish (maybe not your species) I would not have current as these fish come from still brackish water and too much movement unsettles them. However they will love over hanging roots and branches on the surface of the fish tank which makes they feel secure. I used to loved feeding live insects and meal worms as the archer would be trained to spit water at me when it was hungry. You will need more aquarium space as all these fish get bigger.

Hey by the way I thought the burma archers prefer a strong current as they come from rivers with it. Am I thinking wrong? I'll research it a bit as well.


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[golcondorus]

I'm gonna put a power head in there today and see what happens. I read the practical fish keeping article from the UK that does say they like a strong water current so I'm going with that. Did you find other info that says they come from faster waters? I always like to have more than one source for info to make sure it's correct. Either way I'm gonna try a power head. Can't hurt, I can always turn it off.


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[Monstrous]

I have a smallscale archer that gets upset over brackish water. He now live happily in a freshwater setup

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[golcondorus]

There are like 7 species of archer and most of them are freshwater, it just happens that most of those are in Australia and nobody gets fish from Australia. These are from rivers in Myanmar, formerly Burma. It's a region that is very hard to get fish out of, that is why you rarely see fish from there. It just so happens that the easiest species of archer to import, by far is the brackish Jaculatrix. These archers only get 4 to 6 inches long as well.


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[predatorkeeper87]

There are like 7 species of archer and most of them are freshwater, it just happens that most of those are in Australia and nobody gets fish from Australia. These are from rivers in Myanmar, formerly Burma. It's a region that is very hard to get fish out of, that is why you rarely see fish from there. It just so happens that the easiest species of archer to import, by far is the brackish Jaculatrix. These archers only get 4 to 6 inches long as well.


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the whole brackish needs was my only turn off for getting a group of archers...sooo...specifically which species are freshwater/reasonably easy to acquire? I've searched on google and seemed to turn up that either they all require brackish or none require brackish lol...I'm not expert on them so i have no idea what info to believe.

 

[golcondorus]

From what I have read the small scale archer, Microlepis, can be kept in fresh long term. That is the most common one your likely to find. They look very similar to the regular archers so can be hard to tell. As far as I know, Blythii, the ones I have are the only other freshwater archer your going to see because the rest are in Australia


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