Saltwater Basics

Welcome to Saltwater Aquariums 101. I figured it'd help to give you a basic understanding of what is involved in a saltwater fish tank before I start explaining what I did and blow your mind.

So where to begin. Well there are a couple different parts that come together to make a successful tank...

1- the tank
2- filtration
3- lighting
4- water chemistry
5- decor
6- fish!

Some of these are obvious I know and I'll eventually touch on all of these but for now I'll expand on the ones the average joe knows the least about. Lets start with filtration.

Most of you are probably used to freshwater tanks where you just have a little box hanging off the back of the tank to filter out fish poop. Nothing wrong with that! But most successful saltwater tanks (and some freshwater) use what is called a sump. A sump is an aquarium that sits underneath the main aquarium and is used for filtration purposes. Sound a bit weird? It kinda is. Here's a picture.

A saltwater sump

So as you can see it's literally a fish tank underneath your fish tank. So from now on when I refer to my "main aquarium" or "display tank" I'm referring to the top aquarium. The big one with all the pretty fish. NOT the smaller one which does filtration (that's the sump).

So what exactly does the sump do? Well, what happens is water gets drained from the display tank and flows into your sump. Once there, the water is filtered and cleaned and then gets pumped back to the display tank. It's a never-ending cycle of water draining, cleaning and pumping.


Okay that's a good basic description of a sump. Lets move on to lighting. You may think "Uhh Ross dude, it's an effing light. Stfu mate." Well yeah man, it is just a light but what does that light do?! In most tanks lights are just there to illuminate your fishies. Well, sadly that's not really just it. Lighting will determine what algae grows in your tank. Poor lighting = bad algae. And believe it or not there is such a thing as good algae! Lets say you want to go fancy and have some Sea Anemones in your tank for your clownfish to swim around in. Well, sea anemones have little photosynthetic bacteria in them which convert light to food. Wrong type of light = no food = dead sea anemone = two sad clownfish. Same thing goes for coral. They have photosynthetic bacteria so if your lighting is wrong the coral will starve and die. And those fuckers are expensive.


So as you can see lighting is actually important. As for water chemistry- really water chemistry is ultimately the most important aspect of a fish tank. But honestly water chemistry is so complicated I'm going to save it for it's own blog some time. Probably before my tank is ready for fish. Lets talk about decor quick though!

So- freshwater fish tank. You're probably thinking this....

Some gravel rock, some plastic plants, maybe a piece of wood or two and an air bubbler. Very typical for a run-of-the-mill freshwater tank. Lets compare to a saltwater...

First thing you probably noticed is no plants. It's all rock. The rock is very important and will be covered further soon but remember- rock is very important! Often you'll see a saltwater tank using sand not gravel. This too has it's reasons but you can realistically do either sand or gravel. I prefer sand personally. Lastly you'll notice corals in this photo but this is not a given. Corals are an advanced "decor" and may or may not be present. Really the biggest difference is the lack of plant life and the rocks.

Confused yet? I hope not. It's going to get hella more confusing than this. I'm going to hold off on discussing fish which is probably the only thing you guys care about. Too bad, go cry to your mommies and wait a few weeks.