So I screwed up my first brackish attempt...advice requested.

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
knifegill

knifegill

Peacock Bass
MFK Member
Sep 19, 2005
8,782
113
120
43
Oscar Tummy
Typically, when I quarantine a freshwater fish, I simply add the fish to a heated aquarium with a HOB filter and seed the filter with bb the next day. This has always worked like magic and I never read any ammonia after day 3. The problem with my situation is that I felt it imperative to bring my subject into brackish conditions immediately as he had some ulcers forming that the LFS couldn't cure. They had a jade goby in pure fresh, and had already thrown a slew of medications at him for the ulcers without success. I took him home, set him up and did a learn-a-thon to figure out this species is happier when kept in brackish water. So over the next two days I added more and more marine-mix to his new water (I'm changing %25 every day) and now he is doing much better at 1.004-ish SG. The ulcers are far less pronounced and his color is just popping. He's eating well, but the ammonia is...wait for it... 0.50!!!! And I can't get it to budge. I had originally added FW bb from my 55g tank like I always do, but I suspect the rapid rise in salinity killed it off. So I drove three hours to my nearest marine store called 'Saltwater City' and obtained a chunk of cured out live rock meant for nano tanks. I acclimated it over the course of a few hours in a jar (slowly adding tank water and dumping to add more, lowering the
salinity) and added it yesterday. There is still ammonia in the tank.

Stats: 3" jade goby alone in 20g tall at 76ºF. SG 1.004. Added piece of sandstone and bag of crushed coral on first day before adding marine salt.

My potential plan: Do several small water changes to bring the salinity back down to around 1.002 or 1.001 (fish stress?) and introduce more FW bb to get it cycled. Is this a good option or should I wait another day to see if the marine bb are just taking their sweet union time to get the job done?
 
So I'm realizing MFK is a little short on brackish experience...
 
Add some Ammo-lock or Amquel, to neutralize the ammonia, or better still add an Underworld Polyfilter sponge which will remove the ammonia and nitrites (your next problem) and leave a trace for the filter.

Salt reduces nitrite toxicity, but Im not sure how safe it will be - depends on the salinity and the level of NO2.

I think the FW bacteria will survive the change a lot better than marine bacteria.
 
I have a brackish tank and I think you are doing fine. I went harder and faster on the salt though. Almost lost a violet goby to seizures but he's fine now.
 
Thanks for the input. I do think I'll try reducing the salinity and introducing FW bb again to avoid having to use chemicals like ammo-lock...
 
.25 is what mine read i wuld just get a new one thats what i did and test a sample with both that shuld let ya know if you other is expierd or not. come to think of it the bottle shuld have a date of exp on it if its past it get a newone. i wish you luck.
 
Here's the thing. The ammonia test shows 0 for my FW setups, so I'm thinking it either only doesn't work for saltwater at this point in its expiration or I'm just making things too complicated. I'm switching out the marine salt for kosher salt and getting the bugger cycled the way I know how.
 
Few more shots and a vid in case things don't work out.


picture.php

picture.php

Yes, the yellow bar is his color.
picture.php

picture.php


Well, that's supposed to be a Youtube video. I'll try to fix it later, unless somebody here knows how.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxm6OgxcEas
 
So. About those ulcers. Not going away anymore. Just a little smaller but stable like at the LFS. I don't want to ignore them. Could they just be scars?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom