bumblebee goby survival

[dmarcus]

so i broke my own rule, i bought a fish that i knew nothing about. Thank you petco for your knowledgable staff (sarcasm). SO yesterday i bought a bumblebee goby hes adorable and i love him but after bringing him home i found out he was a brackish water fish which the salesperson failed to tell me. I have a freshwater setup which hes happy in so far, ive read accounts of people keeping these fish in freshwater but can they survive for any duration in freshwater?

Also everyone seems to focus on the difficulty in feeding these fish ive read blackworms and brine shrimp. I know someone who had a parasite problem due to blackworms so i think im gonna go with the brine shrimp. What tips can you guys give me to me this gobys life a happy one? Is adding the normal amount of aquarium salt for a freshwater tank a good idea? thanks in advance fishforums.

[Osiris]

I'm assuming this creature was kept in FW, i would slowly gradually over weeks raise the sale levels up in the tank so to 1.010-1.012.

THese guys are very cute creatures. I would suggest using lots of rockwork, being a goby they love to dart in and out of rockwork, but go easy on them and use the smooth rock work

Personally i've never had problem with black worms *knock on wood* they took them very readily along with mysis and brine frozen foods. I dont care to mess with the live foods too much. But most readily take frozen foods, so can look into that.

Don't keep them in pairs, they tend to fight, keep at least in groups of 4 if your going for more then 1. But looking at your tanksetup, it's not going to work, you will end up killing your snails and pleco at least. Well all of them.

In FW, if kept long term, their immune system will diminish, and getting disease will be very easy, hence why the move up to BW is best. Were you planning on setting up another tank for the BBG's?

[dmarcus]

i wasnt planning on setting up a tank solely for the BBG but i am moving in with a friend who has experience in the aquarium hobby and has talked about setting up a brackish tank, he has a 20 gallon, and i was gonna move my amazon cichlids into a 33 long but this wont happen until the end of the summer. The BBG was kept in FW when i first got him, it took me about 1.5 hours to acclimate him to my tank and hes been active for the last 2 days but its time i started worrying about feeding him. Would raising the salt levels negatively affect my other fish, i put some aquarium salt in my tank months ago and havnt added anything else since than, is 1.01-1.012 high? or is it brackish levels. Also how do i measure that number? my thermometer is bouyant and has a little indicator but i always assumed that was relatively inaccurate. I really know nothing about BW setups but from what ive seen the animals are all pretty cool.