How a 180 Gallon Saltwater Aquarium Works

"Hi! My name is Marc representing expertvillage.com. This clip is going to demonstrate the professional installation of a 180 gallon saltwater aquarium for your home or your office. The filtration for this system is rather sophisticated, consist of a wet-dry biological filter, a protein skimmer and external mounted motors that pull water through the overflow column, which is built into the aquarium, down through the plumbing into the wet-dry filter, water is skimmed in the subsection of the wet-dry filter, then pulled again through plumbing, into the pumps ,through more plumbing, and pump back into the tank, this one giant continuous circle of water. Inside the tank we use natural live rock, which are pieces of reef took from the ocean to construct not only the aesthetic building blocks of the aquarium, but also act as a secondary biological filter, it is nature’s natural filter. We stack the rock in the formation we like on the empty bottom of the tank and then we put the sand around it for stability, if we were to stack the rock on top of the sand, and a fish were to dig that sand up, the reef structure could collapse causing scratches and other problems. You then take various synthetic pieces of fake coral and silk plants that are designed to look exactly like their real counterparts of the ocean and you decorate it according to your particular taste, either very lush or very sparse or anywhere in between. Once all that is accomplished and this does take a professional anywhere from 4 to 8 hours depending on the size of the tank, the amount of pumps, and the types of filtration you use, you are then ready to add your starter fish. Saltwater fish tanks, freshwater fish tanks are all basically the same. When you start set them up, you have to put starter fish in, in order to start the nitrogen cycle and then make your tank healthier 4 to 6 to 8 weeks down the line, start slowly adding the fish you really want to keep. Again this tank at this size, it can’t be setup by an individual hobbyist but typically it is better left to professionals who do this all the time because they are going to do it lot more thoroughly, a little more quickly, and a little more professionally than homeowners."