Starting a Saltwater Aquarium

Saltwater aquariums are certainly a beautiful feature for your home, but before diving into this hobby it’s important to understand just what is involved in looking after these colorful fish. Setting up your own coral reef takes some knowledge of marine organisms and how to care for them. So let’s take a look at the time, financial and study commitments that good owners must take on…

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.