Archer Fish?

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dacox said:
Get him in a brackish tank... they need totally different water parameters than your other fish.
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well my local fish store has them in fresh water, also i was doing research on them last night and i found that most can live for many years without even knowing what salt water is. I'm gonna take my chances i have added in alittle extra salt so that will help but i'm pretty confident that it will do fine as long as my flower horn doesn't mess it up.
 
Archer fish really needs to be in brackish water not fresh water. Flowerhorns are very aggressive fish and it'll probably kill the archer.
 
First, and this is important! FIND OUT THE SPECIES!
There are seven species, four are fully freshwater, one is fresh to lightly brackish, and 2 are brackish, one of the latter is sometimes found in full salt but only intermitantly and will not thrive in it long term.
The 2 species that are most commonly sold prefer 1-1 1/2 tsp marine salt per gallon.
 
i dunno guppy maybe u'll be able to tell me.....:thumbsup: this is exactly what my archer fish looks like:thumbsup:

Archer.jpg
 
That looks like the most common and famous import, the banded archer, it gets 10-12" long and is one of the salt loving ones needing 1-1 1/2 salt teaspoons of MARINE salt per gallon, the marine salt will satify the hardness requirement as well, without the salt the get infections and are prone to fungus. 7-8.5 pH, 77-88 F for temp. Like driftwood, mangroves etc, will eat cockroaches, crickets, killies, top minnows etc, sometimes take floating pellets. They are one of the best "shooters" and can hit a bug at about 5'.

archer_catch.jpg
 
RobD23 said:
well my local fish store has them in fresh water, also i was doing research on them last night and i found that most can live for many years without even knowing what salt water is. I'm gonna take my chances i have added in alittle extra salt so that will help but i'm pretty confident that it will do fine as long as my flower horn doesn't mess it up.
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My LFS keeps brackish fish in fresh water tanks too, but that doesn't mean it's best for them. They will do that because they are just temporary homes for the fish. It's not meant for the long term, so you shouldn't base what you do off of what they do at the LFS.

Even if they were happy in fresh water, their harness and pH requirements are different than your other fishes, so none of them would really be happy. Like guppy said, I'm sure they could survive in fresh water, but brackish fish kept in fresh water are more prone to infection/illness and often time won't live as long as they could otherwise.
 
No. Archers need a pretty good temp, high 70s, and mudpuppies are comfortable in high 60s.
 
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