Mud Skipper

[dulce]

Today i saw mud skippers at the fish store and having had afulyl cycled tank and loads of bog wood sitting around i have made a set up to potentially buy them next week but want to check what i have done is ok??

I have half filled the tank with a sand base and a series of bogwood sticking up to make flat surfaces for the to lay on with the heater on the back with suckers beneath the surface.. now bit of a tricky one i had not thought of, i have a jewel tank with the fitted filter which i dont think will work as the outflow is higher than the water level... any suggestions how to fix this.. maybe take the filter out a put a different one in ?

also whats their ideal temp ??

thanks

 

[nmonks]

Mudskippers are not fussy about water temperature, but the main issue is that you provide them warm, damp air. Mudskippers normally spend less than 10% of the time in the water, if they're happy. So you need to build a tank with a glass lid with only small gaps for ventilation. Assuming you have reasonably warm water (around 25 C) in the watery side of the tank, evaporation should keep the air nice and warm.

Since you haven't mentioned this, let's make this point very clear up front: mudskippers will not live in freshwater conditions for long. It's been tested out many times in labs, and the mudskippers eventually die. So don't bother. You MUST keep them in brackish water. Anything from SG 1.005 to SG 1.015 will work. Marine salt mix is the only thing viable here, not tonic/aquarium salt! You also need a high degree of carbonate hardness. Using coral sand in the tank, and maybe adding some tufa rock or seashells to the aquarium, should take care of this.

Do also try and identify your mudskipper before purchase. There are several species in the trade. Some are small and (relatively) peaceful (e.g., P. argentilineatus) others get bigger and the dominant male will kill everything in the tank (e.g., P. barbarus). Make sure you read Richard Mleczko's web pages on mudskippers before purchase, and seriously consider reading his chapter in my brackish water book: it's the single best resource available for anyone keeping these fish.

Cheers, Neale

 

[dulce]

thank you thats all great so the only prob will be the water being brackish as they are in fresh at the moment at the shop, would i just gradually add salt so they adjust if i gradually add seashells as you mentioned ?? will need to look again to identify type they were dark as laying on wood with lovely reflective blue bits !

Oh yes so my lid at the moment would not be ok, i have put a heater in the back and its all steamy ??

 

[nmonks]

Set up the home aquarium at SG 1.005 straight away. This won't harm your filter bacteria if they are freshwater-acclimatised. When you get the mudskippers, just put them in a bucket and dribble brackish water in across 30 minutes. They'll adapt very quickly to the salinity. Once the tank is running nicely, you can raise the salinity if you need to. When kept in freshwater for too long these fish die, so the sooner you adjust them back to brackish, the better. If they've been in freshwater for more than a few months, they may not even survive at all. Check their activity levels and see that they're feeding. Mudskippers are EXTREMELY hardy animals, but they do have their limits.

Most mudskippers have blue speckles on their bodies. But the colour of the dorsal fin is critical. P. barbarus has a blue dorsal fin with red flecks and is extremely aggressive. So be careful. Other species may look similar and be less aggressive. P. argentilineatus has a reddish dorsal fin and stays very small, less than 10 cm. It's the ideal species, and called the "dwarf Indian mudskipper" in the trade.

If the area above the water is steamy and humid your system is fine. If not, then there is probably too much of a draught, and this will harm the fish in the long term. Read about setting up tanks for frogs: that is exactly what you're doing here, in effect.

Cheers, Neale

 

[dulce]

Excellent thank you will go get the marine salt tomoz and a salinity test, it is really steamy now cant even see in it ha ha..the wood is staying damp too so i guess thats good for them to sit on.

can check out species when i get the other things, they were so cool very excited as its been reasonably easy as i had most of the equip already ! they ate frozen blood worms today when i asked them to show me what they ate so hopefully have not been in fresh water for too long.

Thanks for all your help will get the tank running ok for a week then prob get them after that !

 

[dulce]

sorry also if they are one of the more placid species can you keep anything else in the tank with them ?? also in the shop they only had bogwood sticking out for them to sit on would a sand bank be needed as well??

 

[nmonks]

Mudskippers are best kept alone. It's better to have a large group of them (reduces the chance of any one fish getting bullied). So don't waste filtration capacity by adding all kinds of other fish. Keeping half a dozen or more is the ideal.

If you must add tankmates, choose things that are small, such as "feeder" guppies, that will do okay in the saline water. Things that are too small may get eaten, but bigger fish, like mollies and archers, sometimes scare them, the the 'skippers won't go into the water.

Cheers, Neale