so today we're moving the archer fish to their new aquarium a few things might look a little
different from the initial setup we did add a few more little plants i moved some of the logs around
just to bring them a little bit further just to create more depth and make it look a little darker
the tank is slightly cloudy because if you've seen when we set up the oscar aquarium we transferred a
ton of biological media as well as pre-filters and sponges to the aquarium to cycle it
now what if i told you the bacteria responsible for the nitrogen cycle in a freshwater aquarium
is an entirely different species than that of a saltwater aquarium and there's
no specific species of bacteria for a brackish water aquarium you see to make
a brackish water aquarium and i'm going to put this into person a freshwater aquarium has a
salinity or a specific gravity of one everything above that like one even 1.001 has salt in it
a brackish water aquarium starts at around 1.002 and it goes all the way up to 1.022
after that we get into a full saltwater aquarium like we have for kevin mind you
the clouded archer fish can survive entirely for their entire lifespan within a fresh
water system however as they grow they can also adapt to higher salinity levels and move into
a brackish tank now i have a bunch of brackish water fish coming that i am
beyond excited about i'm talking about before the internet and i used to go to the library and rent
books and and i'd flip through the paper pages and i get to brackish and i would see
these types of fish in there and always wanted them i've literally never seen them in person
but in three weeks they're going to be here so i have three weeks to adjust the archer
fists the archer fish to a brackish water aquarium i took two liters of fritz salt
hands down the best salt i've used it it dissolves well in the water um and depending
if you go with the reef salt versus marine salt uh you can get a ton of different benefits bottom
line is this i added two liters of that two liters of of of granulized okay right here
this is enough to make 200 gallons of real salt water you have no idea if you're a freshwater
aquarius just the sheer volume of salt it takes to make a saltwater aquarium but it's a lot
i took two liters of that filled right to the top and added it into the filter before
i added any of the media i let it dissolve i let it circulate for an aquarium for a couple of days
and now i'll show you what the salinity is after two liters you know how like freshwater
aquariums we'll take some aquarium salt rock salt and add it in we think we're adding so much
no we're not but we've added and here's a salinity tester
put in the water let it test we're going to come back to 1.004 so at this point
it's officially brackish but not as brackish as i want it to be it's not brackish enough
for me i uh i'm probably going to raise the salinity in this aquarium to 1.012
which is uh halfway between fresh and salt incredibly brackish if you're not familiar
with the brackish aquarium imagine when the ocean meets a river when they mix at that conjunction
the water's mixing and you get like half fresh half salt and there's specific types of fish
that will survive there and over the next three weeks i'm slowly going to raise the salinity
every few days i'll probably just add a two liter of salt to the aquarium or half
or one liter something like that every couple of days until we get the salinity up to where
we want i have three weeks we could take it slow so that my friends is problem number one
the first thing we need to tackle is the salinity issue we need to slowly get them adapted to it
obviously the second problem is the bacteria not the same bacteria in a fresh as there is salt
but there's no specific bacteria for brackets you see the at this point at this salinity
freshwater bacteria will adapt to its conditions the higher in salinity we get
that bacteria is going to die off and we're going to move into requiring marine bacteria
a totally different species so we'll go from nitrobacter and nitrobacter and
oh nitro sonomas nitrobacter and nitrous sonomas within a fresh water system and then salt water
i don't know i don't know what it's called but i do know that by adding in freshwater bacteria in
these sponges we'll keep this tank going and as i slowly raise the salinity the marine bacteria
which is what all these blocks are will kick in now it's going to take a while for that marine
bacteria to die off in a fresh water system is not going to happen overnight so i have time to
save all the bacteria and hopefully this plan of doing 50 50 of the bacteria will work out long
term now because this is 180 gallon tank and we're adding in relatively small fish this should work
these my friends are the things that get me excited about the aquarium hobby things that
you haven't experienced yet or things that are a challenge or exciting or different or
and then the fish that are coming i'll they'll have to be quarantined but we'll be able to put
them in a full brackish tank and quarantine them in that and then when they're ready this
will be a full brackish tank in today's video we're simply adding in the archer fish and
seeing how they interact with their environment but i definitely had to touch base on that
uh because to me it's just so fascinating now it would be much easier
if i left if i drain this system all the way down and scoop the fish out of the bottom but i'm not
going to be able to do that because i want this tank to continuously run because i do have more
fish arriving here shortly that i'm going to need to quarantine in here and if i were to do like 100
water change or something like that in here uh i'm removing all the ammonia all the fish waste
everything in here and then the bacteria has no chance of surviving so i've left this tank almost
completely alone with no maintenance in the anticipation that i'm going to be moving these
fish and they are going to require or at least the bacteria is going to require something to survive
unfortunately archers are a fast swimming fish and they can potentially be jumpers oh my lord
these guys are beautiful outside of the aquarium aren't they just absolutely fascinating now one
of the things that i'm a little bit worried about is some of the fish that are coming are venomous
now the reason why i'm able to move them over so quickly from one aquarium to the other besides
the fact that we already have their uh filters established with all their bacteria within it
is because over the last couple of weeks i've been slowly raising the salinity
on the 120 up to the 1.004 like the 180 is so there's really no
acclimation required i can just net it from one tank and put them in the other
last one
yeah so for the most part these guys are swimming around acting normal
which is a fantastic sign of a successful transfer from one tank to the other and the
fact that no acclimation was actually required they're not they're not looking like they're
in shock from ph or salinity levels or temperature or anything like that they're just swimming around
let's give them a couple of days we'll come back and see how everybody is 24 hours later and the
archers have settled in beautifully much more rapidly than i had assumed uh they would and i
really want to point out one thing first and foremost um it because the background is all
blacked out because the walls are black in here it kind of makes the aquarium look like it goes on
forever the archers i will say are spending a lot of their time in the back behind the uh
branches or the the logs and i'm not a huge fan of that but again we got to let them settle in
and do really well but they're definitely doing well um switching from their other tank to this
went perfectly fine of course the salinity matched in both of them so that of course wasn't going to
be much of an issue uh the next thing that i'm truly excited about is the fish to come all the
other fish that are going in this aquarium are currently on their way they should be here within
a couple of weeks and they'll go into quarantine and eventually come over to here and like i said
we'll slowly start raising the salinity on this tank over the next couple of weeks
in anticipation to add in some fully brackish uh fish but these archers right now i i think
they look better in this tank than anything else and i think this scape although different for a
brackish aquarium it just makes so much sense for the fish and when the others come you're going to
agree even more i mean the blacks and whites and grays the arches of course have a little bit of
orange and red on their fins but uh yeah this is just absolutely gorgeous the tank has cleared up
a bit as well so it's looking really good but even if we go in through the sides and whatnot
and i can't wait to make more and more of these videos on these fish and what's to come
um and i have a bunch of different ideas but if you're going to see these types of things before
anybody else and kind of have be able to give feedback and that sort of thing or you simply just
you have no patience like me consider being a member of this channel just uh below this video
there's a join now button you become a channel member and uh you know we do live videos and
behind the scenes videos and pictures and all kinds of stuff like that so
if you're not a member yet you got a ton to catch up on so if you want to become a member make sure
you join if not there's tons of other links in the description uh follow me on instagram if you
want pictures or updates on this tank but this will be the tank to follow along with over the
next couple of years simply because uh with the new fish coming in and there's a ton of growth
it's just going to be absolutely amazing i'm going to be setting a target up over on
this side away from the filter and that's why there's not very many logs here
it's a clear shot up so they can kind of group up here and shoot the water over so that's something
to look forward to as well anyways hope you guys enjoyed the video and i'll see you in the next one