Who has a salt water aquarium?

[MikeS]

My wife started one a couple months ago.  Just wondering how many of Wisconsin divers are into them.

[divbum]

I have a empty 75 gal tank I plan to make a reef some day...

[WIdiver_Paul]

I'd love to have one, but it would be a guilty pleasure: it just seems wrong to take poor little Nemo and his friends from the big ocean and put him in a little tank with some coral that some Indonesian got paid 10 cents to pry off the ocean floor - killing the ecosystem and the livelihood of fishermen not to speak of the beauty of a dive site. Nope, don't like it. Would rather see those pretty fish (most of them get harvested on the Del-Ray reef in Florida, one of the best places to dive in the US) where they live, not at the mercy of my knack for killing them. Just like shipwrecks, they aren't as nice if they aren't seen in their original "home". Take the ugly wreck of the Lottie Cooper in Sheboygan at the marina- i'd rather see it underwater than rotting on shore:



/ can't stand to walk through Shedd Aquarium anymore either

[scubert]

I used to keep a reef tank.  In my opinion it is the only way to do salt.  A balanced reef tank requires only the most minimal work for much more return.  I had mine running for over a year with the only maintainence being fresh water added (with moly and kalk) to maintain salinity and the weekly scrape of one of the algae trays back into the system for food.


Several words of warning.
Try to buy 'farm raised' or tank raised marine life.  Too many dealers still sell wild captured (and possibly illegally captured) animals.  Many of these are 'caught' with dynamite, stunning them and destroying huge chunks of reef, or with a squirt of cyanide to stun them, which weakens the fish before transport, the stress of which can kill even healthy fish.
Most people don't realize how much loss is expected to bring a single live fish to market here.

Steer clear of hard corals.  They are the most delicate, generally require the most exacting lighting conditions, and are very territorial, extending tenticles to kill of neighboring soft or hard corals.  When wild caught it means that a reef has been damaged, with the coral chipped out to harvest it.  The chipped area left behind on the reef is now an open wound waiting for infection or predation.
Soft corals are generally easy to keep, and spread quickly, giving you more 'life' for your $. 

QUARANTINE.
Too many products, fish or live rock, come with unwanted guests.  Fish can bring in disease, and live rock can contain the dreaded mantis shrimp, which can and WILL kill off everything else in the tank and are almost indestructable on their own. 

People also don't seem to do a lot or research on the # of fish per gallon.  The freshwater rule of thumb is 1 fish per gallon.  With saltwater, reduce that by 90%, or one fish per 10 gallons, and that's really a maximum.  We're not talking about 10" long fish either, but small 1-3" fish.  One SURE way to kill a whole saltwater tank is to overload it.

Screw the undergravel filters. With a saltwater tank you are way better off with a protein skimmer and a detritus eating starfish.  Or, better still, an algae tray filter.  I haven't done any aquarium keeping in about 10 yrs, so I'm assuming the internet will have WAY more info on these than when I did mine.  Even still it was an incredibly easy system to design, set up, and maintain, essentially turning the aquarium into a closed loop.

Sorry to rant a bit, but this is one I feel strongly about.
If you'd like to discuss it further, shoot me a PM. 

[jasondbaker]

I had a reef tank setup for 4 years.  I totally agree with scubert.  It takes money, time, patience, and did I mention money?  The funny thing is that once I got into diving I just did not have the time to spend with the tank.  Now I think saltwater fish are best left in the ocean -- or on my dinner plate.