The path to having happy, healthy fish living in a beautiful environment is not that difficult, but it is complicated by the mass of conflicting advice on just how to set up a marine aquarium. This article aims to give you a solid overview of the hobby.

How It All Started
Back in 1942 Emile Gagnan and Jacques Cousteau redesigned a car regulator and invented a demand regulator that could deliver fresh air as a diver breathes. Ever since then scuba diving has become increasingly popular, and with this interest in exploring marine life the hobby of keeping these stunning animals as pets has taken off. The ability to collect fish more easily was coupled with growing airline connections to the tropics, and the beginnings of an aquarium equipment industry.

One of the first hurdles to overcome was to find a substitute for seawater, and in the 1950s synthetic salt mixes were developed that allowed hobbyists to more easily recreate the marine environment. This recreation is the key to keeping a successful marine aquarium that can sustain the fish for a full life-cycle: it is all about creating a mini-reef, with nit just fish, but living corals and marine invertebrates (those animals which lack a notochord, a characteristic of vertebrates).

Bury your under gravel filter!
Improvements in lighting, and filtration systems have enabled a broader range of fish and corals to be kept, which allows the creation of more natural and sustainable aquariums. The biggest leap that has been made in the industry is from undergravel pipe filters to live rock filtration. The single best way to set up a saltwater aquarium is with live rock filtration, and you should learn everything you can about this method before making any equipment purchases. As you research the topic you will learn that there are only a few specialist aquariums that would benefit from the undergravel filter.

The use of live rock as a filtration system must be accompanied by a process of nutrient control and export. Any substances that could cause the water quality to be reduced must be removed via regular small water changes, protein skimming, mechanical filtration a water circulation and oxygenation.

Live rock has microbial cultures and other living organisms such as algae and mollusks that help regulate a mini-reef. It is more expensive to set up than an undergravel filter, but this cost is amortized over time and it is the cheaper way to go in the long run – you won’t end up with dead fish every six months. If after your initial research into this live rock approach you are still not convinced we suggest you try it on a small aquarium to witness its benefits first hand. It will take around six months to create a viable, balanced ecosystem.

First Things First
The first thing you should do before setting up a marine aquarium is set up a freshwater aquarium and learn the ropes of fish keeping at the less challenging end of the hobby. With this experience under your belt you are likely to be far more successful with a marine aquarium. The next step is to locate a good local store, and set about making a detailed plan on how your project will progress. You checklist when selecting a store is: knowledgeable staff, broad product range, healthy fish, clean tanks, and a wide range of species.

Tanks: Go Big
Once you plan is in place you will ready to buy your tank, and it should be a tank that is as big as your space and budget will allow. Larger tanks are slightly more expensive heat, but other costs do not rise in proportion to the size, and a bigger tank is better able to survive overfeeding, unscheduled temperature changes and overstocking (although all these problems will eventually catch up with a big tank if they are not corrected). The smaller you go the greater the level of expertise that is required to make it successful, thus a beginner is best to start with at least 40 gallons. The 40 gallon tank usually comes in two sets of dimensions: the 36×18x17 or the 48×13x17 (length x witdth x height in inches). You will see a lot of fancy, beautifully designed aquariums these days, but proceed with caution as some of them put aesthetics ahead of good fish keeping. In particular a tank that is taller than it is wide may look great in your hallway, but it is harder to oxygenate.

A glass or acrylic tank?
Acrylic tanks are available in a far wider range of shapes and sizes than glass tanks, and they are free of the plastic frames that reinforce glass aquariums. They are lighter than glass, and it is easier to drill them for the installation of mechanical equipment.

Glass is cheaper than acrylic, and the tanks tend to come in standard sizes which means that it is easier to buy equipment, such as hoods, that fit easily. Glass does not scratch as easily as acrylic, and it is much easier to clean stubborn algae from it.

At the end of the days it’s your choice, and it depends what weighting you give to the merits and demerits of the two options, but rest assured that your fish will be able to thrive just as well in either set-up.

Time Commitment
Fundamental to good fish keeping is maintaining a clean aquarium. With some fish living up to 20 years old you need to be sure that you are committed to the required cleaning regiment.

The time you need to allocate to cleaning and maintenance will vary depending on the size of tank you have:

• 30 gallons: four hours per week for cleaning, and one monthly maintenance session of around four hours
• 75 gallons: six hours per week for cleaning, and one monthly maintenance session of around six hours
• 150 gallons: eight hours per week for cleaning, and one monthly maintenance session of around eight hours

Each week you will be testing the water conditions, and cleaning the algae off the tank. At the monthly sessions you will replace a portion of the water with synthetic seawater.

Financial Resources
This is not a cheap hobby. You are looking at spending at least $1,000 for a good-looking 30-gallon aquarium. It is not the fish that are the expensive part, but all the equipment that includes the tank, lighting, filter, heater, substrate, hydrometer, thermometer and the synthetic seawater. One way to save money is to keep an eye out for a second-hand tank. When you are preparing your budget look beyond the initial set-up costs, and factor in that you will need to buy test kits, food, sea water and medicine on a regular basis. For a 30 gallon tank your annual is going to be around $200.

Knowledge Base
Since you will be creating your own reef, you will need to understand how the ecosystem works, and coral, invertebrates and fish interact to create a sustainable environment. This part of the hobby can in fact be the most rewarding as you learn about  everything from actinopharynx to zooxanthellae!

Next Steps
Once you have researched the cleaning, financial and knowledge requirements, and decided that a saltwater aquarium is right for you, you need to decide what type of fish you want and the define the size of tank that is needed to keep them. The basic philosophy that should guide you is trying to replicate as closely as possible the fish’s natural habitat. Just as important is creating a sustainable and stable ecosystem so that the fish isn’t subject to sudden changes in water or other aspects of the environment.

As a new fish hobbyist you should focus on maintaining high quality water and controlling the temperature. These skills will form the basis for your set-up, which will also include setting up the correct lighting (broad spectrum and natural photoperiod), adding plenty of live rock and sand, and removing organic waste before it decomposes. One of the key decisions you will have to make is choosing between a minireef and fish only.

Minireef versus Fish Only
Recreating the ecosystem of a coral reef within an aquarium makes for a beautiful display. But these minireefs must be set up so that the chemicals released by corals are not harmful to the fish and invertebrates that you select – this takes careful research. A fish only aquarium does not have living coral so is somewhat easier to set up. You can still have skeleton coral and plain rock instead of live rock.

Choosing a Tank
Your first choice will be between a glass and acrylic tank. Glass tanks are cheaper and scratch less easily than acrylic, whereas an acrylic tank is lighter and is far easier for drilling the holes that are needed for plumbing. You will notice that acrylic is available in a broader range of shapes, and looks more stylish that glass tanks, on the other hand the aquariums usually have cross bracing on the top which makes it awkward to put tanks in.

Setting up a Filter
Next you will need to decide on how to filter your aquarium. The most common option is to have a pump driven filter at the back of the tank. An alternative is undergravel powerheads, but these filters are difficult to maintain because of their location. You must ensure that the pump you select has sufficient filtration capacity for your size of tank, and that the protein skimmer is suitable.

A protein skimmer, or foam fractionator, pumps small bubbles through a column in order to dissolve organic pollutants. The way it works is creating bubbles that are then stabilized by protein, which creates a foam that then rises and spills over the top into the fractionator. This is a great way to get the organic pollutants out of your aquarium.