Edit ArticleHow to Start a Saltwater Aquarium Saltwater aquariums provide the opportunity to keep exotic, colorful and tropical fish in a home or business. Owners say they are soothing, entertaining and a good way to relieve stress. Maintaining a saltwater aquarium is a little more time intensive than keeping up a freshwater aquarium. Start a saltwater aquarium with realistic expectations for a cleaning and maintenance schedule. Select a fish tank. Saltwater fish and plant life are accustomed to living in the vast space of the ocean. Therefore, a sizable tank is necessary to accommodate the type of fish that will live in a saltwater aquarium. Tanks can be found in pet stores and specific fish stores. Previously-owned saltwater aquariums are also available on the market for less than brand new tanks. When choosing the size, consider where the tank will go, and how many fish are expected to live in it. Allow 10 gallons (37.9 L) of water per fish. For example, 10 fish can live in a 100 gallon (378.5 L) tank.

Purchase the tank accessories. Set up the tank and accessories before adding the water or the fish. Test the tank and equipment. Add gravel and plants to the aquarium. Run the aquarium for 2 or 3 days. Popular types of fish and plants include clown fish, shrimp, anemones, yellow tangs, blue tangs, seahorses, crabs, and coral. Clean the tank every week. Change the water in the tank every 3 months. Sand will better reflect the natural habitat of saltwater fish; plus many of these organisms are happier with sand. If you are a beginner, saltwater tanks can be harder than freshwater. Make sure you know exactly what you're doing! Table salt or aquarium salt, or any salt sold for human consumption should not be used to make a saltwater environment! They could contain harmful additives, and aquarium salt is not suited to create saltwater (lacks many minerals and nutrients). Marine salt or salt sold specifically for saltwater at pet stores is needed!

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Any brokerage fees, tariffs and/or taxes will be billed to you directly by the shipping courier. International customers must use the same billing and shipping address.Click here to read more detailed information about international shipping costs and restrictionsConsiderations for setting up a saltwater fish tankA few years ago I decided to set up a self sustaining salt water fish tank; herein is the story of my successes and failures in the project. Many decisions need to be made before even starting to set up a such a tank, with size being perhaps the first. While saltwater tanks are possible as small as 10 gallons, they are very difficult to maintain (they cannot be self sustaining) and do not offer much variety. I picked a 55 gallon tank as a good size for a beginner; not so small as to make maintaining an ecological balance too difficult, yet small enough it would not (I hoped) break the bank in costs. I did not wish to make a project that took a great deal of my time each day - rather I wanted to build as much as possible a self sustaining system.

I did not want a simple glass cage with some pretty fish; instead I wanted a coral reef environment in my living room. Salt Water Fish Tank Accessories from Amazon! Test kit for salt water aquariums. Tests for pH, ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Setting up the AquariumPlacement is important. A 55 gallon fish tank can weigh as much as 400+ pounds and is fragile; it is not something that you will want to move around every month or so! Natural light is not necessary, but canTraffic patterns in the home need to be considered, as doI chose an enclosed stand for the tank as necessary supplies could be stored inside, out of sight. tank and stand, used, from Craigslist for far less than I would have spent otherwise and after a thorough cleaning assembled the tank and stand in what I hoped would be a good permanent location. The next step is water. Obviously, saltwater is necessary and while it is possible to purchase pre-made saltwater artificial "salt" is

This is not table salt - specialized salt for salt water aquariums must be used! Water and salt are mixed according to instructions and added. Many people will comment that de-ionized water is required; I did not find it so. My home is fed by ano chemicals such as chlorine or flourine are added so I thought it worth a try to use that instead of specially treated waterIt is possible to treat city water for an saltwater fish tank and it would probably work, but I have no experience with it. With the water added I allowed it to set for several days while my heaters (I used two with the theory that if, or when, one failed the other would maintain the temperature until I noticed the failed one) stabilized the temperature in the upper 70's. Adding Life to the Salt Water Fish TankNext is the addition of live sand and live rock. 50 pounds of each for my tank; this is on the short side, but I figured on adding more rock later and neither one (especially rock) is cheap.

Both of these are taken from the ocean and and kept wet and warm until sold as both contain bacteria and other organisms necessary for a selfInterestingly the rock often contains small marine life as well and creatures such as worms, small crabs, and even small fish can be exciting to suddenly find in your saltwater fish tank that you didn't put there. At this point I added 2 filters (purchased with the tank from craigslist) without any filter media in them. was simply to move the water around in a simulation of tidal and windA saltwater fish tank is not a still, stagnant swamp; it is the ocean,You will need to wait now perhaps a week or so while sediment and sand settle.Large amounts of light are needed to provide for a true coral reef. Many animals utilize bacterial action requiring tropical levels of sunlight for survival. A 55 gallon tank such as I had could easily use 800 watts of lighting, which can lead to overheating of a tank quite easily.

One possibility is to add a cooling system, but my solution was to provide 260 watts of HO flourescent lighting and limit myself to corals and other animals that do not require more. Most soft corals will do fine, but hard corals, clams and other creatures will not. With the lighting installed it was time to add some fish! But not just any fish - the tank is not truly ready yet. I added a pair of small, cheap fish that would survive nearly anything - necessary as the water purity is about to undergo radical changes. A complete test kit for salinity, pH, ammonia, nitrites and nitrates is necessary and should be used every day. In a fascinating display of ecology in action I watched as ammonia levels rose dramatically over the next couple of weeks. Nothing to done about it - it is a natural reaction to the wastes of the fish being added to the aquarium. Soon enough the bacteria in the live sand and rock begin to reduce those nearly lethal levels of ammonia, but then nitrite levels began to rise.

Again, with time the bacteria began to eliminate the nitrites in the tank, but they then produced nitrates, with the process repeating itself. All in all it took several months for the tank to stabilize, or "cycle". Even my two small fish survived, which rather surprised me. The desired wildlife may now be stocked into the tank, but with great care. One inch of fish per 5 gallons of water is probably safe, but barely. Corals may be added, along with various cleaning animals such as crab, shrimp and snails. I added only perhaps 2 fish, or one or two small corals, at a time, giving the tank a month or so to readjust to changing conditions. If too much life is added too fast the cycling process will repeat and most of the life will probably die. In any case saltwater fish can be $50 per fish or even more - I couldn't add more than a little bit at a time. I found that there was very little maintenance necessary to my reef. Salt tended to collect on the surfaces and needed to be cleaned off.

A cover or lid would have helped, but I had some trouble in the summer time keeping the temperature down. As I never added a cover the water would evaporate about a gallon a day, providing some cooling effect. I had to replenish the water (but not the salt) and did so with plain tap water that I let set out for about a day before using it. Feeding was necessary each day, and with the variety of life I maintained I needed a variety of food. I found that it helped if I fed the brittle starfish small pieces of raw shrimp, by hand, for example. With a sea urchin also in the tank, care had to be taken as punctures from it were not only mildly poisonous, they hurt! I had a wide variety of life in my tank which kept up interest considerably. A small cleaner shrimp that would climb over my hand, "cleaning" it. The urchin and brittle starfish noted above, along with a more normal orange starfish. A sand sifting fish that continually sucked up sand and spit it back out all over the rock. Sand sifting snails that buried under the sand only to suddenly re-appear when food was added to the tank.

Of course a pair of percula fish (nemo fish). Several soft corals, including a large leather coral - cut off the limbs and "replant" it and both pieces survived. I tried two clams and several hard corals - eventually all those died, probably from insufficient light. Various fish were around, some quite beautiful, some not so much. One in particular we named "Ugly". I actually enjoyed the non-fish life more than I did the fish. I failed a couple of times in not doing my research on the fish I wanted. One ate my feather dusters, while another ate the slowly growing coral that was covering the rocks. One ate other fish. Great care must be taken, and considerable research done before purchasing fish as they have different nutrition needs and require different "societies" to live in. Some are quite aggressive and some quite passive. I found the pet/fish stores often don't really know and while I always asked I also learned to do my homework online before going to the store. Certainly my greatest failure was having too much life at one time.