so if you didn't know my Aquascape for my shell dwellers totally failed because they ended up
digging up the entire thing and then plus the high concentrations of African cichlid salt ended up
killing all of the plants great so I figured I'd try again but this time with Marine salt no no
I'm not going full salt water I'm doing brackish water which is like a mix of fresh and salt water
it sounds a little scary but my boss Zenzo from Tazawa Tanks says that unlike reef tanks it you
don't have to be exact with the measurements of the salt because in brackish environments
they're used to really heavily fluctuating water perimeters in fact since I have soft water I'm
already adding Seachem Equilibrium minerals all the time to help the plants grow so I figured
this can't be that much different right after the horrible task of having to catch all the
shell dwellers which you can watch that short video over here it's time to redo the scape now
the nice thing is that African cichlid tanks and brackish tanks are similar in that they both have
higher pH and GH so I was able to use the same substrate that aragonite sand because that helps
to keep those parameters higher as well as the same equipment the heater the sponge filters and
then once I had dug out all of The Hardscape the petrified wood that I used before I kind
of set them up in two separate Islands on the two ends of the tank and that way they would kind of
help to hide the equipment I had there now what plants should I use previously I had floating
water sprite which absolutely melted in the high pH and GH so I need something that can survive in
brackish water which as you know most plants don't like salt now there's this great article on Tumblr
which I will link in the description for all these different plants that supposedly do well in
brackish water and the specific gravity they can withstand but I also talked to again Zenzo he has
personally experimented with many of these plants and he said really the only thing that survived
has been mangrove trees and java fern which I don't really want to grow a tree in my Nano tank
I mean this is a 20 gallon long technically but java fern I can do so I ended up ordering four pots
of java fern which is split into eight plants and then I had this idea to use plant weights on the
bottom of the bunches and just kind of sink them down but eventually I found out once I added the
animals they completely ran them over and tipped them so I just kind of wedged them in between the
Rocks so they'd stay there java fern is like a classic beginner low light plant so I just got a
Easy Plant LED as well as Easy Green fertilizer to grow them the caveat is that Zenzo said you know
they grew up in fresh water so I'm gonna have to slowly acclimate them over the course of two to
three months so that they get used to kind of a low end brackish water level now that the scape
is done it's now time for my personal fun part which is researching the animals I personally
am not familiar with the brackish world like what species you can keep much less their care
requirements I I mean I'm at the level of how do you even keep a practical aquarium so thankfully
there is a very helpful Aquarium Co-op article which I will link Down Below on how to set up
and maintain the correct salt levels and then it had like some recommendations of beginner friendly
brackish animals I also checked out a book called Brackish Water Fishes by Neale Monk which was super
helpful overview after kind of looking through all the animals I decided on bumblebee gobies they
only get to about one inch which is perfect size for the 20 gallon they are gobies an oddball fish
which I love seeing their quirky little behaviors and I really like the coloration of the four bands
and the kind of Bumblebee color I think it'll be cool unfortunately an unexpected problem I what
had no idea what's gonna happen is and it makes sense but brackish animals are really hard to
Source like they're not as popular and therefore they're not as available in the aquarium trade
and so all these This research I did for finding the perfect animals to stock my tank they were
kind of my dreams are going down the tube but thankfully I saw that Dan's Fish located in
Wyoming had some ocelot bumblebee gobies so they're not quite the type I was looking for
it's kind of more of a variegated striping another scary thing is it's not like an official species
recognized species so I don't know if they're full freshwater or brackish or what all I have is what
the company told me which is they use fresh water that's filtered from their local river which has
extremely extremely hard uh water parameters so that's what I'm kind of going off of but I
was really impressed by their customer service they were very prompt with the responses each
of the fish came individually packaged which was unbelievable they all survived and I cannot tell
you how much I love these guys they are so cool like really Derpy Behavior they're constantly like
just hopping around and uh sticking to the glass sometimes if one gets too close to another they'll
like growl at each other and chase them off like I absolutely love them I fed them live baby brine
shrimp and because they're slightly translucent you can totally see their big fat bellies full
of pinkness I mean absolutely adorable I wasn't planning on breeding them but then I saw the cover
of that brackish fish book and it had bumblebee gobies laying eggs inside of the same snail shell
that you use for Shell dwellers so of course I had to get some snail shells put them in the aquarium
and we'll see what happens I'm still working on balancing the nutrients and lighting for the
java fern so to help out with the algae I got some algae eaters some red onion nerite snails to help
scrub the walls as well as one jumbo sized amount of shrimp to help clean up not only algae on the
leaves but also clean up kind of the excess food that the Bumblebee gobies tend to leave behind
now I have space for one more species so I'm thinking figure eight puffer or Indian dwarf
mudskippers what do you guys think if I get the puffer the pros are I'm not gonna have to rescape
the whole thing but I will have to get rid of the invertebrates because he'll probably go after them
if I get the dwarf Indian mud skippers I'll have to completely rescape it so that they have an area
of land to climb on but I will be able to keep the inverts so let me know down in the comments
what you think otherwise take time to enjoy your aquariums and I'll see in the next video thank you