Freshwater Archers

[CAC]

Hi ive recently seen freshwater archers (Toxotes microlepis they grow to about 12cm) for sale, and im wondering if anyone can give me any advise...
I could keep it/the group in a 32UK Gallon tank, that 4 foot long, and 15inches high.
if i kept one, id think about silver dollars and small(ish) cats...
could i keep a group?
if so how many?
i think its reccomended to keep arround 6, as to spread agression...please correct me if im wrong!

what do people feed them, can you use frozen food like bloodworm and brin shrimp etc.
or does it need to be thing like prawns?!?!

Thanks, Mikey

 

[CFC]

As far as i am aware all archer fish will require brackish water to some degree with the exception of a small localised population of Toxotes chaterus from a landlocked lake somewhere in Australia, T.microlepis are a lower end brackish species which means they dont need a SG above 1.005 but they wont thrive in totally freshwater in the long term.
Archers are fairly large fish that reach an average of around 6 inches in captivity and need a fair ammount of space, i wouldnt recomend keeping them in tanks below 55 US gallons and for a group at least 75 US gallons so i feel that your tank would only be suitable for one archer at a push.
Feeding them is easy, they will take all manor of frozen and prepared dried foods without fuss.

 

[AMS]

See my replies to this same question in the brackish section Here.

 

[CAC]

So if i kept just the one in that tank, then could i keep anything else, like bumblebee gobies etc...

 

[AMS]

Yes you could keep other fish, just not bumble bee gobies as the archer will eat them. Fish such as figure 8 puffers, glassfish, kinght gobies, orange chromide and mollies will do fine with the archer.

 

[CAC]

Im not sure about the brackish thing...i know im no expert and i know you know more than me and i trust you, but how come nmonks said there FW and wildwoods did too...

 

[AMS]

Most low-end brackish fish ARE naturally freshwater while only sometimes they swim into slightly brackish water, such as your archer. The problem with these low-end brackish fish is that in captivity they dont often fare well in freshwater in live a much healthier life in brackish water. It is not scientifically explained, but any aquarist even nmonks will say they same.

 

[CAC]

Ok, what does keeping them slightly brackish involve???
ive heard its quite alot more work...

 

[AMS]

It is not much work at all, its as easy as keeping them in freshwater. All you have to do is add a little salt.

CFC explains How to Keep a Brackish Aquarium as does nmonks in the brackish bible in Setting Up the Brackish Water Aquarium.

 

[nmonks]

This just isn't true. There are 7 described species of archerfish, of which 4 are strictly freshwater. Two (T. microlepis and and T. chatereus) are brackish water species but regularly found hundreds of miles upstream, and only one (T. jaculatrix) is anything close to being exclusively brackish water. Of the three brackish water species, only T. jaculatrix is ever found in marine waters.

Fundamentally, archerfish are a freshwater group with some brackish water species, and not the other way around. On the other hand, the traded species tend to be the three brackish water species and rarely, if ever, the four exclusively freshwater ones.

If Wildwoods says the archerfish for sale are freshwater species, I'd tend to accept that. They don't make stuff up, and they have a good reputation. I wouldn't trust Petsmart on something like this, but Wildwoods should be OK. If the T. microlepis they have are one of the freshwater populations, keeping them in brackish may do them harm. I would recommend keeping them in hard, alkaline freshwater for the time being and seeing how they do. If they fail to settle down and won't feed, then maybe consider adding salt, but otherwise keep them in fresh. Perhaps mix with potentially salt-tolerant tankmates such as rainbowfish or livebearers. SG 1.002-1.005 would be fine for T. microlepis, even if it was a brackish water population.

Archerfish aren't the same as monos and scats despite being lumped with them. They aren't "marine" fish in any sense of the word, and if you think about how they feed, shooting insects from trees, at the very most they're going to be following the edges of mangrove swamps and the rest of the time along riverbanks, not open estuaries or coastal seas.

Cheers,

Neale

As far as i am aware all archer fish will require brackish water to some degree with the exception of a small localised population of Toxotes chaterus from a landlocked lake somewhere in Australia...

 

[pieman]

It is true that some species of archer fish can break tank glass?

 

[AMS]

It is true that some species of archer fish can break tank glass?

I have never heard this, and I will bet no species of archer has the strength or powerful enough jet-stream of water to break glass. Maybe you are getting them confused with mantis shrimp?

 

[CFC]

This just isn't true. There are 7 described species of archerfish, of which 4 are strictly freshwater. Two (T. microlepis and and T. chatereus) are brackish water species but regularly found hundreds of miles upstream, and only one (T. jaculatrix) is anything close to being exclusively brackish water. Of the three brackish water species, only T. jaculatrix is ever found in marine waters.



If Wildwoods says the archerfish for sale are freshwater species, I'd tend to accept that. They don't make stuff up, and they have a good reputation. I wouldn't trust Petsmart on something like this, but Wildwoods should be OK.

Neale

As far as i am aware all archer fish will require brackish water to some degree with the exception of a small localised population of Toxotes chaterus from a landlocked lake somewhere in Australia...

Unfortunately as good as Wildwoods are they do routinely sell brackish fish, even high end to marine species as freshwater, i myself have bought a Echidna rhodocheilus and a Batrachus grunniens from them sold as completely freshwater fish although i knew different and bought them specificly for our high end brackish tank. I have only ever seen or indeed heard of 3 archer species traded within the UK, these all being the 3 named species above, T. microlepis, T. chatereus and T. jaculatrix, the latter of which being the most common. I have kept both T.chaterus and T.jaculatrix in both freshwater and brackish and can with 100% faith say that they fare far better in brackish water and would almost certainly have died had they remained in freshwater. What i should have said in the above quoted text is that as far as im aware the only traded freshwater archer fish available are from a small localised population from a lake in Australia which Wildwoods were able to import a small number of last year, Australia has very strict rules on the fishing of their freshwater native species for the aquarium trade which makes obtaining any freshwater Australian fish difficult at best and is the reason the majority of the Australian fish we see in the trade are either tankbred (rainbows and Mogurnda species for example) or are from costal populations which are not as heavily protected.

 

[CAC]

Oh right...
ill see when i get it, which will be in a few months, as on the top of my adgenda is a senegal...(if anyone can help please post in my topic in the oddball forum)
so CFC you think it wll most likely be a brackish fish, sold more as a freshwater???

Thanks, mikey

 

[nmonks]

Unfortunately as good as Wildwoods are they do routinely sell brackish fish, even high end to marine species as freshwater, i myself have bought a Echidna rhodocheilus and a Batrachus grunniens from them sold as completely freshwater fish...

This is a good point, and I'm not arguing with it. I've bought Arothron hispidus as a freshwater fish, when it is obviously a high-end brackish to marine fish. So I don't debate that aquarium shops sometimes (often?) get this kind of thing wrong. But in this instance, why would Wildwoods make a point of advertising these as T. microlepis and sell them as freshwater fish? This makes no sense to me -- if they were actually T. jaculatrix which would sell at least as well as some of the bizarre stuff they buy in.

I saw these archers about a week ago when at Wildwoods, and they're not T. jaculatrix. The only other thing they might be is T. chatareus, so in the brackish forum, I put up some pictures comparing that species with T. microlepis. If the photograph Wildwood have on their web site is reliable, then the small size of the scales on the body are in indeed like those on T. microlepis.

I have kept both T.chaterus and T.jaculatrix in both freshwater and brackish and can with 100% faith say that they fare far better in brackish water and would almost certainly have died had they remained in freshwater.

I didn't say that either of these two species should be in freshwater, only that T. microlepis may be. T. microlepis is a freshwater species that sometimes enters the low-salinity parts of estuaries. In the main body of the estuary or mangrove is is displaced by T. jaculatrix or T. chatareus. Whether or not T. microlepis actually needs a little salt in captivity I do not know (cf. figure-8 puffer) but since there are freshwater populations of T. microlepis, and Wildwoods says that these are what they are, and the photograph evidence seems to support them, I'd tend to accept that at face value. If they are freshwater fish, keeping them in brackish water would be just as bad for them as, say, keeping T. jaculatrix in freshwater.

I don't know anything about the lake population of archers in Australia; all I know about from there is the Fitzroy river freshwater population (similar to T. jaculatrix but having distinct scale patterning) and now known as the new species T. kimberleyensis. There are also various freshwater populations of T. chatareus in Australia. T. microlepis is found in freshwater rivers in Thailand, Sumatra, and Borneo and thus is easily within the catchment area of the regular fish exporters.

Cheers,

Neale