My Brackish Paludarium

[BrackishBoi]

I have had a few requests to post this. So, here it is finally!

I have a 75 gallon tank (holding only 30+/- gallons of water). The specific gravity of the water is between 1.005-007. This means the water in my tank is about 20% the strength of true marine water. Brackish water is considered anything between 10% and 80 % the strength of normal marine water (S.G. 1.002-018).

The environment I have set up is called a paludarium. Paludarium comes from the Latin word 'paludal' (of or related to marshes) plus 'arium'. It's just a fancy word for an aquarium with land in it . It's set up to ressemble that amazing habitat where the river starts to meet and mingle with the ocean.

FILTRATION:
I use Marineland’s Magnum 350 Convertible Canister Filter. The uptake is buried towards the bottom of the rock waterfall structure. The return is concealed at the top of the water fall. I use SeaChem’s Sea Gel media in the canister and the waterfall its self acts as an aerobic and biological filter.

LIGHTING:
The light fixture I use is Current USA’s Nova Extreme. There are 2 T5HO bulbs in this fixture; one 10,000K Daylight and one 460nm Actinic. I of course run this fixture on a timer.

LIFE SUPPORT:
For heating I use Hydor’s ETH (external thermal heater). This is a great, very efficient in-line heater that is connected to the return line of my canister filter.

For flow I use a small (170gph) Tetra powerhead which I salvaged from a messed up in-tank cartridge filter.

I also have an ExoTerra Ultrasonic Fog Generator hidden behind the water fall which runs on a timer. The timer is set to make more fog in the evening and less in the middle of the day.

I use All-Glass Aquarium’s Glass lids to keep everything (fish and fog) in the tank and to help regulate the temp and humidity.

CURRENT CREATURES:
1 Kight (Fan Dancer) Goby
2 Japonica (Amano) Shrimp
6-8 Ghost (Glass) Shrimp

CURRENT PLANTS/ALGAE:
3 Java Ferns
Java Moss
Chaeto Macro Algae
Fancy Bamboo

The land part of this habitat is a peninsula made up of almost 100lbs of carefully stacked river stone topped with the Malaysian bog wood and the waterfall continues up from the rock peninsula and is constructed from natural and resin cast rock and bog wood.

IN THE FUTURE:
In the near future I will be adding more fish and plants to complete this little world.
Future inhabitants will include a mate for my knight goby, 2-3 rope(reed)fish, 2-4 muddskippers and an undecided number of red mangroves.

[papagimp]

for the love of god we need photo's!!!!

sounds awesome though, it's funny to see cheato and java moss in the same livestock list, lol.

[BrackishBoi]

[papagimp]

Very Nice!! thanks for the quick pics

You have a fog machine on that thing? I wanna see a pic of that doing it's thing, lol. Just need a little disco ball hanging fromthe plants and the fish will be ready to DISCO!!!

[BrackishBoi]

I never thought I'd have cheato and java moss in the same tank either lol! It was an experiment aclimating the cheato to brackish and I'm happy with the results

[BrackishBoi]

Here's one... Let me see if I can't get something better

[BrackishBoi]

[BrackishBoi]

It's get really foggy really quick lol!!!

[jksteele010]

That is just great. Makes me want to keep my 75 when I go bigger. Very slick.

[mskohl]

That is very cool. Take some pics from further away. It would be cool to time lapse it on the fog coming in. Boy, I'm getting picky- huh?

You should expand this a little and put it on the comas website. It would be great to have a completely different set up available to our website viewers that don't visit RC.

[Serra]

That is about the coolest thing I have seen in a long time! Great job on setting up the bioscaping. Hope you are on our next tank tour.

Thanks for sharing!

[purza_00]

The descriptive writeup was excellent leaving me anxious to see the pictures. Very well done.

[Travis L. Stevens]

I love the curly "bamboo". I didn't know they will survive in brackish water. Maybe that's why our aren't growing at a spectacular rate.

[magellan007]

that is one bad-*** setup... makes me want to do a mini one. (how much $ you got in there at this point, if you don't mind me asking?) i hope it doesn't make your room smell like a creek, lol, but i suppose as long as the water is moving and plants are taking nutrients out, it shouldn't smell so bad, right?

i don't think you'll ever post too many pictures of that, so don't stop!

[BrackishBoi]

Thanks for all the great compliments everybody, it's very encouraging!

magellan007-
Not including the river rock (most of which was free from my parents tee-hee!) or the stand, I've got probably got over $900.00 put into this set up!
Wow now that I think about it, I know where all my gas money is going lol!

mskohl-
I'll definitly try to package all this info together and submit it to Paul for the COMAS page. Actually, he may be able to take it all from here...hmmm. Oh, and I'll try to get some pics from farther away

[Little Bitty]

Great Job!!! This thread was an interesting read.

[jeeperrs]

Don't encourage him to much because soon he will want to take it out of his room and put in the living room. My tank doesn't need the competition ha-ha I am kidding, it is looking pretty nice and I find myself going in there to look at it.

[BrackishBoi]

I've 4 mudskippers in the tank now, but they're being really shy! As soon as I can get some good pics, I'll post'em

[Travis L. Stevens]

Awesome! i can't wait to see pictures of that! I love mudskippers

[fishquaria]

Congratulations... That's a lovely setup... Very interesting... We'd all love to see more pics of the tank and some of your equipment... All the best....

[BrackishBoi]

These are blurry, but I'm working to get some better pics :P

[Serra]

Mudskipper? Too crazy!

[BrackishBoi]

The Tank



The Skippers



Voila!

[FUA]

very cool, fun tank!!

[mskohl]

that's really nice.

Let's see a time lapse (can do in photobucket - I think) of the fog coming in. That would be great to watch. I love the condensation on the glass.

What maintenance issue do you have with this kind of set up?