DBT's are fresh and brackish, they are born in fresh waters up stream, as they get older they migrate down into brackish waters. Captive breds can be raised in freshwater or bracksih and have been known to do just fine their whole lives in either. Mine were born and started in fresh like they normally would in the wild, and I will most likely keep them in fresh. The brackish water's main purpose for DBT's is it's ability to control ailments, especially of the skin, due to it's salt content. As long as the turtle is kept in more than averagly clean water, there are usually zero problems, and this is a widely debated topic with no clear consensus, however brackish water has no other positively known effects on the turtle other than it's cleanliness, so it isn't something that needs to be supplied for comfort, it can be absent as long as precautions are taken to prevent the ailments that salt prevents. I do this by keeping a flawlessly clean tank with the minimum amount of aqaurium salt, just added as a conditioner (not enough to change salinity), and I give the little guys a sulfa dip about every week for a couple hours. I have mondo grass in the tank now and it does great and the turtles seem very happy. I took the anacharis out because it seems to promote more algae than a simple grass, but besides that there actually are many plant species that habitat brackish waters.

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