Is keeping a marine aquarium difficult?
Marine tanks are very expensive and hard to maintain. If you have the money and the time to devote to keeping one then go for it. For a first tank you wouldn’t want anything smaller than about a 29gallon, the smaller the tank the more difficult it is to keep stable. You’ll need a skimmer ($150+) make sure you’re getting a high quality skimmer, cheap ones, like SeaClones, won’t do the job and end up spewing out bubbles. LiveRock (about 2lbs per gallon at about $5-9 a pound) you’ll either need to get pre-cured live rock, or cure your own, don’t just toss it in your tank. Lighting ($100+) without good lighting your live rock won’t grow anything and it’ll be a mess, you also wouldn’t have the option of keeping any corals. You’ll also need the salt itself, which varies in price depending on how much you’re buying/where you’re buying it from. Before adding any fish make sure you research them, don’t just go on what the pet store employees tell you, 90% of what someone from a petstore tells y
If you’re not already a fish hobbiest (freshwater tank), then I don’t personally recommend a SW tank. IMO, a beginning hobbiest should not have a SW tank as their first fish experience. You can do a lot of reading to learn things, but some things will still go wrong your first time around. Sometimes, you just have to learn by mistakes…and you probably don’t want your learning tank to be a SW because it will become an awfully expensive lesson. SW fish are muuuuch more expensive than FW and are much more sensitive to water conditions. Most FW fish are now farm raised, whereas SW fish are mostly wild caught and therefore more susceptable to death if their conditions aren’t almost perfect. SW tanks cost much more to set up as well, so if you’re a learner, it may suit you better to start with a FW tank and graduate later down the road to a SW. I suggest a larger tank…at *least* 20 gal…because believe it or not: the BIGGER the tank, the EASIER it is to take care of. This is because the
