Brackish nitrifiying bacteria

[reiverix]

I'm setting up a 15g brackish tank to house either a figure 8 or some bumble bee gobies. I'm open to suggestions.

Now, my LFS is pretty good and they keep their brackish fish in tanks with 1.005 SG. Anyway my plan was to seed the filter with media from my established planted 75g. Then it struck me that the nitrifying bacteria will probably be a different strain. So I think my only option is to do a fishless cycle. Or, will the bacteria survive from my freshwater setup?

I'm also going to try a few plants. It seems that java fern, bolbitis and crinums will tolerate brackish. Anyone tried?

Thanks.

 

[RTR]

The FW nitrification bacteria hold in light brackish, but seem to get set back (osmotic differences?) a bit if adjusted too quickly. The change-over to SW bacteria is not a hard line but seems to be about 1.008 - 1.010 from reports on the forums.

I do not have much luck with FW plants in BW myself.

 

[Pufferpunk]

You will be fishless cycling at the SG the fish are kept at in the LFS, which is usually FW anyway.

 

[TKOS]

Java fern is supposed to be able to tolerate low brackish as is water sprite. But I would acclimate them as slow as possible and not be too surprised if they do slowly die off. If the leaves start to fall apart I would remove them from the tank before they cause problems.

 

[reiverix]

I'm going to test with the following plants since I have so many cuttings I don't know what else to do with them.

Wisteria
Java fern
Java moss
Tiger lotus
Dwarf sag
Broad leaf sag
Anacharis
Crinum calimistrum

The tank is set up with aragonite sand, driftwood and zebra rock. Filtration is a Penguin 125 with the biowheel removed. I also added a small AC powerhead. The filter was seeded with some media from my 75g. Finally I added ammonia to bring it to 5ppm.

So, I'll slowly raise the SG to 1.005 to match my LFS brackish tanks. If all goes well then yippee. Otherwise it's no big loss and I'll just keep adding ammonia and do a fishless cycle.

 

[reiverix]

Well that didn't go too good. I accidentally raised the SG too quick and the seeded filter died off.

So one more question on the brackish bacteria. If I put some bio media in my nano reef on top of live rock, will it pick up some bacteria to kick start a brackish cycle?