Brackish Fish - changing from a saltwater to a freshwater environment

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Samwyz

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May 11, 2009
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I got a nice Green Scat a couple of weeks ago. He was in a freash water environment in the store so I was able to put him in freshwater tank immediately. PH is 7 - 7.2 so he's doing fine. Now I saw a nice Red Scat and want to get him as a companion for my Green Scat, but the store has him in a salt water environment.

:help:
Any suggestions on how to move him over? I already asked the store if they would change the environment for me and then bring him home, but they said they can't. I have another take, but I don't have any equipment for a saltwater environment.

Thanks for your help!

Sam
 
Sploke

Sploke

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Oct 20, 2005
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Both the red and the green scats will get up to about 12", so keep that in mind for the future as far as tank size. Scats will do alright in FW as juveniles, but naturally move to higher-salinity brackish water and even full marine as adults to spawn. Are you going ot try to acclimate the red scat to FW, or move the green scat to BW/SW? The latter would be my suggestion. Get some marine salt and start increasing the SG by about .002 per week. Ask the pet store what SG the red scat is being kept at, and shoot to match that.
 
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Samwyz

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May 11, 2009
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New Problem

Thanks for the reply. I was actually able to get a different pet store to help me to convert the red scat over to FW using a "drip" method over a couple of hours. I needed to do it that way because my existing tank is a community tank and is FW.

Now I have a different problem - the green scat is a bit bigger than the red scat and so far they keep fighting periodically. Seems the red scat hasn't conceeded to the dominance of the green scat, so the green keeps reminding him who is boss every now and then. I hope they settle down in the next couple of days.

Yes, I know as they get larger I will have to upgrade to a larger tank. Hopefully, not too soon!
 
Sploke

Sploke

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In the wild, they are schooling/shoaling fish, so that kind of dominant aggression would normally be spread out over several (or many) other fish in the group. Keeping only two of any kind of naturally shoaling fish will often result in the dominant one severely harrassing the other, which can lead to health problems due to the submissive fish being constantly stressed. Even if the submissive fish does concede to the dominant fish, the dominant one is likely to continue the harassment. Unfortunately if it continues to be a problem, the only real way to solve it is separate them or add more fish, the latter being the preferable solution as keeping schooling fish singly can also lead to high stress conditions.
 
boostnbuds

boostnbuds

boostnbuds
Sep 21, 2007
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I would just do as stated above and slowly increase the salinity in the fw tank.
 
Sploke

Sploke

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That will work as long as you get rid of all the FW community fish first, as many don't take well to brackish conditions.
 
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