I have been wanting to buy a freshwater flounder. The ones my lfs have are the brackish types. What is the salt called that I use and how much do I use? I heard they are freshwater when they are tiny but as they get older they become brackish. When do I start adding salt or should I add it from the get go? What is the min tank size for a full grown one? I want to get it a tank that it can have for life. I have heard they like to dig themselves into the substrate. I’m guessing this means I should use sand. What should I feed it? I don’t want to feed living foods. Tank mate suggestions would be nice also. Do I need to get more then one flounder?
liv2padl
04-09-2007, 6:27 AM
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=freshwater+flounder
I actually did google and I searched on the fourm back to 2005. I am still left with questions. Maybe people on the fourm who have been successfully keeping them can help me out.
Whats the best temp to keep it at? I have read from 65 to 85F. Will 10g be okay for life? How much salt? Its called aquarium salt, right? 2 teaspoons per galond? 1 teasone per gallond? I rather not feed it live food, what should I feed it? I have read not to feed it flakes. When should I start adding the salt? I have also never used sand before. What should I do differently when using sand? Do they need to have friends? What type of sand do I get? Can it be from Toys R US or dose it have to be made for aquariums? I dont recall seeing it in any of my lfs'. Do you have to do anything to the sand before putting it in the tank?
oddballfanatic
04-15-2007, 7:09 PM
10g is way to small, they need at LEAST a 30 gallon
Germanman
04-16-2007, 4:26 AM
yea they need larger than a 10 gallon. i kept mine fresh and they did great for years. main diet was bloodworms and the temp was 78. they grew fast and did well and always enjoyed the sand pit i made them. they tend to not do well with rocks and pebbles and will even get wedged under large rocks and die. they seem to be more of a species tank thing but are real fun to keep.
Pufferpunk
04-16-2007, 11:42 PM
Article by Robert T Rickets:
Oddball: Freshwater Flounders
Or Maybe Soles? - Flatfish
These fish show up occasionally in many local fish stores (LFS) — regularly but seasonally in mine. I confess a fascination with them dating back many years. My first efforts to keep them were in the dark ages, when I actually kept community tanks. Big mistake — huge! I knew little about their needs, but learned fast that they are fin nippers. I learned this perhaps most easily because I was not feeding them properly either, so they showed their lack of suitability for a community tank by shredding tankmates’ fins before they died of starvation.
Okay, in the LFS you see this fish plastered to the wall of the tank. If its belly is toward you, it is unmarked, but actually looks something like a Rainbowfish profile plastered flat on the wall of the tank, and with no visible eye. The anal fin is very broad-based, coming well forward on the fish’s profile, but much shorter than the dorsal, which comes farther forward than any other fish I know, well down on what would be the fish’s face. If you have the “dorsal” view of a “flounder” on the side or rear wall of the tank, the unpaired fins are less obvious as the body coloration (mottled with black/dark brown blotches) extends into the fins uninterrupted. Close looks show there are eyes, both on the same side of the body, protruding like a frog’s, but much less noticeable. The mouth is still pretty well where it should be, giving the whole creature a strange asymmetry. Whether flounder or sole — the differences are technical, it is a flatfish. These are born as “normal” fish. Then one eye migrates around to the other side of the body, ending with both eyes on the same side, now to be the “top” of the fish as it settles out for life resting on the other side on or in the substrate, or swimming just over the substrate. Showy? Not at all. Active? Only at mealtimes. Irresistible? For me, just about.
Eventually I learned that these beasts, “hogchokers” being my favorite common name, are not true freshwater fish, but are least brackish to possibly marine at maturity (not unlike several of the brackish puffers, monos, and some other “brackish” fish we keep). Fine, I’ve done puffers for years. So we set light brackish water for them, or if in fresh at the LFS, gradually bring them up in pH and hardness to pH 8.0-8.2 and GH at least 12-14 (or more). To accomplish both, we should use marine mix in the water. I kept mine at specific gravity 1.003-1.008. They are obviously bottom-dwellers, and from their cryptic coloration, probably hiders or lurkers. Okay, then I had no fine-grained marine sand available, so used the finest grade of silica sand I could get. Today I’d use marine sugar sand instead — to help maintain the buffering. The swimming motion of these beasts is wonderful — they move with a rippling motion of the unpaired dorsal & ventral fins (now peripheral fins I suppose), rather as do knifefishes and the round rays. This is of course on those rare occasions when you get to see them swim. They settle into the sand exactly as do rays, rest at the surface and ripple the fins to kick up a small cloud of sand (or silt) and disappear. Only the protruding eyes give them away (some puffers do this as well if the substrate allows, especially while young). And they stay there for extended periods. Unless of course some tempting morsel swims or drifts over, such as a guppy with rippling caudal fin, or a molly wagging by. Then the sand explodes, the target is well nipped, and the flounder is back in the sand, all but invisible. As they grow they can capture and eat immature guppies and other fry. The fish we see at the LFS are temperate, so should be kept at less than tropical temperatures, making the livebearers mentioned before not good tankmates even if they were not being harassed. Room temperature should be all that is needed. Subdued lighting is all that is needed as well, or maybe more than is needed, as plants are not easy in brackish.
Rumor has it that there is a true freshwater flounder from somewhere in the Amazon basin, but I’ve never seen the fish in the flesh and have only heard of the importation of them a few times and at very high prices.
Feeding is not really difficult IF you are willing to do live and some frozen. From the LFS, blackworms and redworms are taken greedily, as are adult brine shrimp (but less avidly in my experience). Frozen bloodworms (midge/fly larvae, not a worm) are taken as well. Be sure to rinse these under the tap to minimize organic pollution of the tank water. After adapting to captivity, chopped clam or squid is taken as well. Probably any textured meaty frozen food would do. Although nipping by these fish is obviously a response to visual clues, they seem to have an acute sense of taste as well, as they react quickly to the presence of even rinsed frozen food in the tank.
I have read that they can get to 6″ standard length in captivity. My three made about 4″ or a bit under in a year and a half to two years before I traded them off. They started life with me in a 20-long, later were moved to a 33XL. Both tanks were canister filtered, lower tier (i.e., near the floor and therefore cooler). Routine water changes were my then standard 15-25% per week (now I would do larger partials). As I had brackish puffers at the same time, aged premixed water of the correct specific gravity was kept on hand. Marine salts need time to dissolve, even if only at brackish densities, so preplanning helps. As these are brackish water fish, as is the case also for marines, it is better in my opinion to keep stocking densities lower than is common in freshwater. Both setups were of course my traditional “empty tanks”, in that I could see the fish (or at least their eyes) and nobody else could. Even when I fed them you could not see them for long.
Not a fish for everybody, the flatfish are interesting, low maintenance other than the live and frozen feeding requirement, if you think you can deal with an empty-appearing tank. If you keep other light brackish tanks, and other fish needing or requiring these same foods, they are really low-care. But you can’t keep anybody else with them, or I couldn’t. These are, in my experience, strictly species oddballs, kept for the curiosity of them and their secretive lifestyle on an open sand or silt plain.