New To Fish Keeping need Advice on Tropical vs Marine

Hi all


Whats more difficult to keep Tropical or Reef fish? Im not talking about the effort J I have a 60L tank and wondering which route to go.


Really keen on Marine though

 

In my opinion Tropical is much easier.
Marine is more specialised, and you do better with larger tanks, than trying to keep a small tank stable.

A 60L tropical tank can be stunning.

My 60cm planted tank, housing Treadfin Rainbows and some Galaxy Rasbora.

 

Tropical...

 

Hi and welcome to the forum

I agree with what has been said... especially if you are new at fish-keeping

Marine is more specialized and an expensive way to learn
Start with a nice tropical tank and you can always go marine at a later stage

 

Hi there

I think it is up to you to decide what you ultimately want.

The nitrogen cycle is the nitrogen cycle. You can learn all about it on your journey into the marine world. If you ultimately want a reef, you will never feel satisfied with the best discuss tank if a full mixed reef is what you want. So it does not make sense wasting money on going tropical then changing to marine. You may just not use the tropical lights, return pump, heater etc...

Factors I would consider if i were you:

1 - How much money do you have to fork out in the beginning to get setup;
2 - How much money do you have available monthly;
3 - How much time do yo have to dedicate to your marine;
4 - What is it that you really want from a tank;

Setting up a marine is expensive as you will need to carefully plan your entire setup. Not that you do not need to do this with a tropical setup. But taking into account the investment you are going to make its better to know exactly what you want. A full mixed reef with LPS, SPS and softies, a reef with just softies or just a fish with live rock only tank. This will determine what equipment you will need in terms of lighting, flow, amount of liverock etc.... One small mistake or oversight in the beginning will lead to your either forking out loads more money or spends lots of time working on your tank daily in order to get your setup right (for eg free of algae)

Once you have have setup your tank (bought all of the expensive lights, skimmer, flow pumps, return pump, heater, RO system, salt, substrate and liverock, refractometer, test kits and most importantly... back up power), you will now need to cycle your tank (If you do your research then this will be a simple process). Once cycled you are gonna wanna get your fist set of nemo's, maybe a school of blue/ green, a cardinal and a clean up crew to try and get some live in the tank. The price of livestock is expensive. Go and visit some sponsors and have a look. Then once you manage to keep all of the first additions alive yo will want to get nemo its home.... Anemone's are not cheap. As too are other corals. What I am trying to say is you will be pouring loads of money in to the tank even after being setup.

Then depending on how you setup your tank, you may need to spend hours each week testing parameters manually with test kits and adjusting them accordingly by dosing trace elements. Depending on budget you can automate most of the system. From monitoring of parameters to cleaning of skimmer cups and top ups of RO water.

If you want something that is gonna take you on a incredible journey that will have you staring at your tank at all hours of the day in order to spot that first sign of life, have you pulling out your hair trying to battle cyno and green hair algae and ultimately satisfied when you have a stable system that is free from problem algae full of live with corals flourishing everywhere then marine is the way to go. It is a massive challenge but very rewarding. You have to be 100% committed though. The moment you start slacking on your husbandry (tank cleaning, RO top ups, checking parameters and maybe water changes) you will start running into problems.

One word of advice I could give you is to do your OWN research. Spend hours on MASA (Marine Aquariums South Africa) reading their sticky's in the beginners section. Go to some of their gatherings over weekends and talk to them. Get their advice and opinions. be careful as certain individuals will stick to their own belief and will not agree with other hobbyists when something new or doing something different to their way works. This is purely due to ego and pride. Then also talk to REPUTABLE LFS's. I am sorry and do not want to be slated for my next comment. So apologies in advance for my comment. But I have learnt expensive lessons as a result of this. Do not just go with whatever a LFS tells you. Listen and go and do research on whatever before you buy it from them.

Lastly, this is my opinion. I may not be 100% correct and some other users may disagree and that's fine. But this is my reply to your question. Hope it helps you.

 

tropical...............

 

I agree fully. Just gave more info on marines due to his last sentence.