Is it hard to be Successful with a Salt Water Tank?

When starting an aquarium, nobody does so with the thought of, I want to fail.  Quite the contrary, people start in the hobby to succeed at establishing a community of animals that grow, and thrive.   Failure in the hobby many times can be avoided by planning from the beginning.  Not only where the aquarium will be placed, or how much money you will spend, but exactly what you want to look at when all is said and done.  Success in the hobby is measured in years and not months or weeks.  And, an integral factor to success in longevity is to combine animals that will cohabitate in a natural manner for many years to come.

Physical Environment  

The physical environment encompasses all factors that pertain to placement and decoration.  The aquarium should be located where the ambient temperature and lighting can be easy to control.  Excessive lighting, whether from the outdoors or indoors, can be a huge factor to uncontrollable algae growth.  Drafts from central heating and cooling systems, or heat from an outside bearing wall can make the temperature difficult to control.  Noise and activity should also be paid attention to.  Constant activity around the tank whether it is from children, pets, or adults will lead to fish that are skittish in the least.  It can also be a contributing factor of long- term stress that can lead to constant struggles with diseases.  The same scenario can result from excessive and erratic noise.  If the aquarium is located in the proximity of the home theater system, the noise from the surround sound system could also be a contributing factor of long-term stress.  Although fish are amazingly adaptable, the extremes are what need to be avoided.  The inside of the aquarium should be decorated in a manner that will contribute directly to long-term harmony.  The framework of the live rock should allow for multiple territories, as well as uninhibited water flow throughout the tank.

Reef vs. Fish Tanks

Half the battle to being successful with your pets is choosing wisely which pets to put together.  Corals come from environments that are ruled by mostly constant and unchanging parameters.  The sun is always predictable and the dilution factor of the open ocean is infinite.  The water chemistry is coined as pristine.  This means that it is largely devoid of organic by-products that are inherent with healthy, eating and growing animals.  Having fish in your aquarium means having to add food to keep them healthy. This is where the pollution and hence maintenance of an aquarium originates. Small fish appropriate for a coral tank require much less food than large fish associated with fish tanks.  Many of the angels, and butterflies kept in captivity would not only require rich diverse food to stay healthy, but will directly feed on corals.  Triggers, puffers and many wrasses need large amounts of rich meaty foods to grow and behave normally.  The amount of food going into a standard reef tank to keep a puffer or trigger fed, more often than not overwhelms the filtration and maintenance of the system.  What all this means is that success is much more likely with corals when the food input can be limited.  And, when the inhabitants arent eating them!  Likewise, success with a fish tank is more easily achievable when corals are not present.

Behavioral Harmony

Although the reef as a whole works, many of the relationships that are natural are either intensified or altered in an artificial closed setting with a finite amount of space. This means, that the reef as a whole is not reproducible in the average aquarium.  Instead particular habitats can be recreated with great success.  Recreating a natural setting that houses the fish inherent to it, allows those animals to display natural behavior and feel comfortable.  This is directly relevant to aquarium keeping success.  A yellow tang in a 125-gallon tank swims comfortably.  A yellow tang in a 30-gallon tank is cramped.  And, since natural behavior promotes health, the yellow tang in the 30-gallon tank is much more likely to have disease issues. Another scenario of incompatibility would be having a trigger or a puffer in a reef tank.  The trigger or puffer would constantly predate on snails, crabs, shrimp, etc.  Your clean-up crew would be in a constant state of flux.  It would be costly to constantly replace the critters that are supposed to keep the tank clean.

Nutrition & Feeding

For all the different animals that inhabit the reef, there are as many different diets required ensuring health and growth.  The amount of foods available to the hobbyist nowadays is much more diverse than it has ever been.  However, not every diet is reproducible.  Many of the more obscure or rare butterfly fish and angel fish require particular types and quantities of live coral to not only survive, but to grow and live comfortably.  Just the same, there are many types of cleaner fish that make a living by cleaning parasites and bits of food off of other fish.  They do this as a primary diet.  Obviously, we do not want to promote the continued occurrence of parasites in the aquarium just to keep a cleaner wrasse alive.  Consequently an integral factor to keeping a successful community of animals is being able to provide a highly nutritious and diverse diet.  The inclusion of some of the higher quality vitamin additives can also be a huge factor to the intensity of activity and coloration exhibited by fish in captivity.  They help to bridge the gap between the diversity of food sources available to them in their natural habitat and the limited availability of foods in the trade.  One of the biggest mistakes made, is limiting the diversity of your pets diets.  No one food provides all of the necessary vitamins and minerals.  Unfortunately, animals fed a limited diet are doomed in the aquarium. 

Conclusion

These are just some of the major aspects to being successful with a marine aquarium.  Planning and researching from the beginning of the venture can alleviate most of the shortfalls, such as where the aquarium will be located, the types of fish that will live in it, and whether or not they will cohabitate in confined quarters. The accessibility to foods, and the time willing to be spent providing the diet will weigh into what fish are appropriate for any aquarist.  For guidance on any of the issues aforementioned, come on in and consult with an AquaTouch employee. Success can be realized and achieved from the beginning!

Prepared by Scott Davidson