bichirs and brackish water??

[jenner1]

I just have a question about bichirs and brackish water. Are they able to survive in slightly brackish water? My friend has a tank with a specific gravity of 1.004 and he has alot of different types of fish as well as a delhezi bichir. He has had the setup for over a year and everything seems to be doing fine. Is this a disaster waiting to happen? I am in the process of seting up a 140 gallon and when I was doing some research about the types of fish I want to put in it I couldn't find any info on this. I would like to go with a brackish tank but bichirs seem like a pretty interesting fish. I don't want to ever bring any fish home to a unsafe environment for them. Does anybody have any expertise on this? The only info I could find about this was that bichirs have been found in areas where rivers enter the ocean but are primarily found in freshwater.

any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

[cdawson]

I'm not an expert by any means on bichirs, but I do know that they're strictly FW and will definately not benefit from being in BW. Alot of fish enter BW temporarily but cannot live in it for long periods. That bichir will probably have an extremely shortened life and most definately a deficient immune system.

 

[cohazard]

Bichirs are very hardy fish, it won't die right away from being in brackish water, but you shouldn't keep one in BW at all.

If you're getting bored with your BW tank, then find it's inhabitants new homes, and then setup a semi-aggressive FW tank in which a bichir is compatible.

How many gallons is your tank BTW? What kind of bichir did you want?




Serg

 

[Oddball~]

Bichirs are definitely a NO for brackish waters. They will die because their gills will waste away due to the salinity.

 

[olaf]

I totally agree with cdawson, SoCalSunset, & Oddball~.
The only member that can go brackish is the ropefish, and that would be slightly brackish.

Just a note;
I have found a few books (older), stating that they can go brackish, but I think they stated that because of their ability to tolerate bad water conditions for peroids of time.
Brackish in some languages mean bad water.