Saltwater Tank Future?

[38Gallon]

If I went with a 15-20 Gallon Tank for Saltwater- What equipment obviously besides the salt would I need & What approxiamately will the initial costs be?

Thank you in advance.

 

[lizardfishman]

ornata's 100% correct. its not that hard you just need to know what you are doing.

 

[frontosa_man]

A salt water fish tank is so much easier than what most people think. If a person genuinly understands the in's and out's of a fresh water aquarium, they will do fine with a salt water fish tank. They are almost identical, fish produce waste, bacteria brakes the waste down, we do water changes to remove the left overs. It really is that simple.

I think one of the big reasons that salt water has such a bad reputation is because there are many lousy freshwater aquarist out there who don't know they are lousy aquarist.

Example; A guy buys a cute little oscar, put's it in his 55 gallon. He feeds it alot, adds water when it evaporates, cleans the tank every once in a while when it looks nasty, basically doesn't do all the things the aquarium and oscar really need. Why should he, the fish is doing fine and is growing real big.

Let's face it, oscars and many, many other fish would survive in a bucket with an air stone and bread crumbs.

Well this same guy now thinks he's a good aquariust. Why shouldn't he? This fish has been alive a long time, grew it up from a baby. Everything has gone great. He sets up a salt water aquarium, treats it the same as he did the oscar and everything is dead in a week or two. He blames his failure (like many others have) on "Saltwater".

It's not saltwaters fault, it's the horrible maintenance and filtering pratice many people have and the un qualified clearks at LFS that offer lousy advise. I guess ultametly, it's the aquarist fault for not educating them selves before getting an aquarium & fish.

educate yourself. dont always rely on the people at the LFS.

 

[frontosa_man]

If I went with a 15-20 Gallon Tank for Saltwater- What equipment obviously besides the salt would I need & What approxiamately will the initial costs be?

Thank you in advance.

you will need about 1 to 1.5 lbs of live rock per gallon of water the tank is,and the same goes for live sand bed.this is if you do a nano reef tank with small fish.also need a filter for the tank,something that does not mount inside the tank(could cause a heat problem),a small power head, a good light that can support the corals, and test kit with hydro meter.

you can do a salt that small but it will be a little more touchy then a larger one.

 

[Ornatapinnis]

A really valuable peice of equipment I forgot to mention....a great salt water book. I really like the saltwater for dummies book. Suprisingly, it's a very well written book.

You need a good biological filter, hydrometer, heater, calcareous substrate (aragonite, crushed coral, dolomite) ( I prefer aragonite). Hard to know what to sugest on such a small tank for filtration. Perhaps as someone else mentioned, use live sand and live rock as a portion of your biological filtration and supplement it with a power filter like a penguin. THe book will help this make sence. As per lighting, if your keeping photosynthetic organisims (corals/ anemones) you will need a better system like a power compace for example. If your nit keeping corals and anemones, a strip light from the aquarium manufactured should be fine.

Read up on this first, it will make a huge differance inyou suscess.

Joel

 

[guppy]

I was just reading that book at the library yesterday, easy to use and understand.

 

[frontosa_man]

thats the book i used when i first getting started. i like how its set up. very easy to understand. good luck

 

[romanmann]

you could pull it off with that tank, i would go smaller. the smaller the tank the more work and monitoring involved. buy the book the conscientious marine aquarist and it will reall help. the cost to run your tank with fish and invertebrates will probably be around $1500 and thats being convervative. absolute read alot first, the net and books and bombard your LFS people for info. it will save you tons in the long run. spend most your money on skimmer, lighting and really good live rock and then everything else will fall in place. but you need a plan as far as what you want in the tank ie. fish, invertabrates, corals and then you can plan your equipment required. but buddy absolutely read this books it helped me a ton