? about Anableps

V

valerie

AC Members
Apr 18, 2001
1,318
0
0
41
Edmonton, AB
Hello, I'm new to brackish :hi:

Last week i was given a tank with an Anableps from someone that couldn't keep him anymore. HEre is a little info about his tank

The tank is 36x18x15(about 42g) and is filled half way with water(so about 20gals). The SG is about 1.004. The tank has a sponge filter fun by a AC pro2 powerhead. Temp 78*. The Anablep is a male and about 7-8" long. He is about 2.5 years old.

OK, so here is my questions since before last week I knew nothing about brackish. Are there any tank mates i can put with him? When i feed him he is very messy and i was wondering if there is maybe something i can put with him to clean up his leftovers. Some sort of bottom dwellers or something like mollies maybe. PLus the tank looks a little bare with just this one guy in there.

Now i have some questions about feeding. The girl that i got him from fed him only frozen foods(mostly mysis shrimp). This week i've been feeding him bloodworms, mysis and brine shrimp. IS there anything else i should be feeding. I read they are insectivores, do they need any veggies?

Also usually he is just floating just below the surface(yes i have stuff from him to rest on), I never seen him swim below. When i feed him he will sometimes try to swim to get food thats fallen but it looks like he is struggling. Like he can't stay submerged and floats back up to the surface. Is this normal? The girl said that he has always done that. He doesn't look bloated or anything. Is this normal for anableps or is there maybe something wrong with his swim bladded?

Ok this thread is long enough, lol. I"d really appreciate any tankmate suggestions you guys might have :)
 
really cool fish, havn't had a place to keep them, yet... If you can't track down any of the info you're wanting, there are two people in my local club that have had or still have them. We have an online forum you can reach them through at www.okcaa.org feel free to stop by and ask questions. One guy that I know has them is Gerald and the other that did have one was Earl. cya, Kyle
 
Feel free to ask me questions too as I have MUCH experience with these. It is normal for them to have difficulties swimming to the bottom as their swim bladder is designed so they don't have to swim to stay on the surface, so deep diving is difficult. If you can find them more Anableps are appreciated. Mudskippers will work (tank is kinda small but will work for awhile). Other than that Mollies, Guppies, Bumblebee Gobies, Knight Gobies, etc...There are tons of possibilities. Anyway hope this helps and good luck!
 
Cherrypie,

Thank you so much for posting those links, especially the second one. That has to be one of the most fascinating fish I've read about in quite a while and that web site was awesome.

Roan
 
Roan, no problem, agreed they're an amazing fish. It's amazing what a little googling can turn up :D
 
Thanks guys :hi:

I've read pretty much all i can find online about them. Those 2 links you posted have so far had the best info(especially the second).

MonoSebaelover- What have you been feeding yours? Is it alright to only feed frozen foods? I tried some other foods I have but he didn't want to take them.

So for tankmates mollies and knight gobies are ok? Have anyone tried keeping Zebra snails in brackish? I've heard you need brackish to breed them but does anyone keep them in their brackish tanks?

Also, I believe that most mollies at the LFS are being kept in freshwater tanks. How would i go about acclimating them to the brackish water? I dont' really have an empty tank to put them in and slowly raise the salt.
 
Moving to brackish is pretty easy, just get a hydrometer (or better yet a refractometer) and add marine salt to your change water. As long as you don't try jump up a huge amount in specific gravity/salinity with each water change you wont have any problems.
 
cherrypie said:
Moving to brackish is pretty easy, just get a hydrometer (or better yet a refractometer) and add marine salt to your change water. As long as you don't try jump up a huge amount in specific gravity/salinity with each water change you wont have any problems.
Click to expand...

But how would you go about adding fish(mollies, celebes rainbowfish,glass fish) that are being kept in freshwater at the LFS into your brackish tank? I don't have another tank to put them in and acclimate them(slowly upping the salt with each water change).

Does the acclimation to salt have to be done over a long time(a couple days?)

I"ll see if i can find someone who is keeping these fish already in brackish and see if i can get some from them.

But how are people supposed to keep these fish in proper conditions(with salt added) if they arne't being kept in salt at the stores. Makes it a bit hard to add any new fish to your brackish tanks.
 
Sadly us brackish aquarists are kind of a fringe element amongst the general aquarium keeping population. From a retail perspective, selling a primarily brackish water fish, which has been acclimatized to freshwater opens it up to an almost infinitely larger market. It's a sad situation, but I think it's fairly obvious that the majority of fish sold, especially in the freshwater market will be killed by the ignorance of their owners. Combine that with the fact that most LFS/LPS's have staff which lack sufficient knowledge in the feild and either fail to properly educate new owners or fill their heads with irrelevant and inaccurate BS.

Ok I've had my little rant. *phew*

Anyhow, yep it sucks, you buy a fish and want to put it in your brackish tank, yet it has been kept in freshwater at the lfs. A lot of the brackish water fish will tolerate very high fluctuations in specific gravity and at least in theory you can pretty much dump them in and they'll survive. Obviously we care about our fish and want to treat them with the best of care, so acclimatizing is the way to go. Ussually I bring up the spec gravity in my qt tank if I get someone new I want to add to the brackish tank, they get a gentle raise over 4 weeks. However, I'm frequently adding feeder fish to the tank now and I don't really like wasting expensive marine salt on mosquito fish while they're in qt, so what I do is a slow acclimatization in a bucket. Initially I did try introduce the fish directly to the water, being mosquito fish, a hated noxious pest here, I didn't really care too greatly about their well being, but found I was losing between 1/4 and 1/3rd of the fish within minutes of their addition.

The spec gravity in my BW tank is about 1.009 (~12ppt salinity) which is a pretty decent jump from fresh water. I start the feeders off in the bucket with water from the qt tank (new fish, I'd use a combo of the bag water and add dechlorinated fresh water to make up enough depth), an airstone and a little hagen mini heater (preset at same temp as the BW tank). I then slowly add water siphoned out from the BW tank over the next four or five hours and then net the fish out when the salinity is pretty close to the BW tank. This is probably not the most ideal way to handle the situation, but the fish that have gone through this process have not showed obvious signs of stress and have all survived the transition, those who have managed to avoid being eaten for several weeks seem perfectly healthy. If you're around the lower end of brackish I doubt you'll have any problems adding fish this way, just keep a careful eye on the fish during the process and increase the salinity slowly.

It's best to maintain a QT tank to prevent diseases entering your main tank/s and this would be the best strategy to adapt new fish to the higher salinity, I highly recommend you consider this approach if your finances and space constraints will allow for it.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom