New to Salt Water fish keeping. Have questions (MANY)

[nbruce2]

Hi this is my first post to the community. To understand what my goals are I would like to share my experiances and my inspirations for the project I would like to take underway. Im a Environmental Sciences college student at West Virginia University. i just spent a semester over seas in Samoa studying Marine Biology and such. It was easily the time of my life as I was able to swim with Tiger Sharks, experiance coral reefs up close and even witness the feeding of a Great White. Now that Im back home I want to try and own a saltwater tank of species of fish that I saw in the Pacific reefs because of the colors and essence of the fish. But I have so many questions and dont know where to begin!

My dad used to have Oscars in 100 gallon tank. He used to feed them goldfish and that seemed to get pricey. Whats a good "vibrant" reef colored species that I can feed simple "fish food?" After all I am a poor college student. (always the excuse)

I plan on using about a 50 gallon tank.
A) How hard is it to keep up with the cleaning of the salt water tank vs freshwater
B) How pricey is it to get the correct filters and what not for a salt water system

And last and not least what kind of salt water plants are manageable in a tank? Even better where would one be able to aqcuire these plants?

Thanks for any response as Im completely new to having a salt water system as opposed to a freshwater system witht he Oscars.

 

[Zari]

For fish you got many options from damsels to clown fish to wrasse to dwarf angels and then on. Check out live aquaria its a really good site to look at some of the saltwater species out there and get an idea of what you want.

As for maintaining the tank its not much harder then a freshwater tank.

And in the way of filters this is where it gets costly you don't need a hob filter or canister you just need live rock which runs $3-5 a pound and you need 50lbs for a 50gallon tank. And a protein skimmer which can run $200-300. And then some more circulation pumps and such to get the total turn over to around 10X.

Granted that's not everything but it does scratch the surface