Salt Water Aquariums are exceptionally beautiful. If you appreciate the beauty of fresh water aquariums, salt water aquariums can do better at times.
Having and knowing these things can really work your way for having the best salt water aquarium that you ever dreamed of.
Click Here for Your Ultimate Guide For Salt Water Aquarium!
Equipments Needed
Here are the equipments that is a MUST to have for a successful marine aquarium.
- Light bulbs should have light temperature between 10000K-20000K. It is actually twice as much as fresh water aquariums need.
- Substrate can be crushed coral or coral sand and of course live rocks. This is where your live corals will grow and where fish will breed.
- Protein skimmer is necessary. This one will skim the proteins which have large molecules. Furthermore, it can provide you with additional filtration system.
- Sump is best to have but not required.
- Auto top off is good to have but not required.
- Canister filter is ok but hang on the back filter is better.
- Wave maker or extra power head for good water circulation. It adds the “sea effect” thing of your tank.
Other equipments that are not here are good to have but not really required because of the cost. What I listed here should be good enough to get you started. As for fish only tank, light temperature is not important and in fact, it does not require substrate as well.
Click Here for Your Ultimate Guide For Salt Water Aquarium!
Maintenance
Now let’s go to the maintenance. Actually, it’s not that hard to maintain salt water aquarium, but it is a little more expensive than having
a fresh water aquarium.
Below are some of the regular things that you will have to do in maintaining your tank.
- Monthly water change is not needed. Salt mix can be very expensive and on top of that, marine tanks require mature water. Water change can be done monthly.
- Scrubbing the glass with algae can be done on a weekly basis or whenever necessary.
- Checking the salinity everyday is really important until you memorize the water level where salinity can affect the water parameters due to evaporation.
- Water top off can be done daily as well or if you have an auto top off, this should not be a problem.
- Checking the water parameters weekly is important for tanks that are not yet mature.
- Cleaning the equipments inside the sump can be done every three months or whenever necessary.
- Watch out for the skimmate cup of the skimmer, make sure you dispose the filthy water and clean the cup.
- Feed some corals as well such as sun coral and others.
It may sound a lot of work for the marine tank but most of this can be done in 2 to 3 minutes only.
Cost
The only cheap material in a marine tank is the sand. Live rock can be costly depending on the quality of the rock. The cost of a marine tank can be 5-10 times bigger than the cost of a planted tank.
Fish is also quite more expensive in a marine tank than fresh water aquarium.
The cheapest marine tank I had which is just about 7 gallons cost me $500 and that is just about the cost of 3 planted tanks that I have.
Beauty and Satisfaction
It is true that planted tank can be beautiful but marine tank has an exceptional beauty as well. From fish, to rocks and corals, it is indeed very colorful. On this kind of tank, all you have to worry is the rock arrangement.
You have nothing to trim and corals takes years or months to propagate before you actually need to frag them. So in this case it is hassle free.
Arrangement of corals doesn’t really have a rule just make sure there is space between each kind of corals otherwise you will have a chemical warfare inside your aquarium.
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