Reptile & Amphibian Forums

which live plants are ok to use in a freshwater tank for DBT's. I heard Anacharis is ok?

Diamondback Terrepains are brackish water, Anacharis are freshwater. Any freshwater plant you put in a DBT tank will die within a day or so. Have you allready gotton your DBT? They are not too common and I would think that you should allready know they require brackish water?
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A room of herps.
www.freewebs.com/kapoktree

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.

My b, didn't know that and sorry for not doing the proper research before answering your question.
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A room of herps.
www.freewebs.com/kapoktree

Hey there,

I mostly use Anacharis and Java Fern. The Anacharis they seem to like to eat, which is fine. They tend to leave the Java Fern alone, I heard it has a bitter taste. I don't see why the Anacharis would cause more algae growth. If anything it should help reduce the amount of algae by absorbing the nutrients in the water which algae grows from. Maybe just bad timing?

Chris
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I am currently in the US Navy, so unfortunetly I have sold off my collection of herps. But over the years have kept many different species of turtles, geckos, lizards, amphibs, and even fish. Looking forward to getting back in the hobby once im out though!