How to Start a Saltwater Fish Tank

Video Transcript

"I would like to talk about what you're going to need for a saltwater tank. Obviously you're going to need a tank, something to put it on, some kind of stand. A cover and a light. In this particular tank I'm not using a cover, that's a personal choice and there's reasons not to and reasons that you should. You're also going to need some salt mix and a mixing bucket would be very handy to have. It should be a dedicated bucket, dedicated to your fish tank, something that's not going to be used for soap or something else. And you're going to need a hydrometer to measure the salt levels. This hydrometer measures specific gravity and the way it does that and this little needle floats and gives you a reading. This tank is actually reading a little bit too salty right now, 1.025. Specific gravity relates to the amount of salt in the water at a certain temperature. These are handy little hydrometers to use but not always dependable because over time they tend to drift in their readings and if you have two of them they'll probably not give you the same reading. So it is a good idea to have two of them. A backup hydrometer might be a glass one that you place in the tank and you read where it floats and these tend to be a bit more dependable although they break easy and if you want to go all out, a refractometer is the way to go. The refractometer is a lot more dependable. You place your water on the lens and then hold it up to a source of light and it will give you a very accurate reading. To consider is after you have your salt all set is sand, base rock and live rock. I usually recommend an inch of reed sand in the tank. It can be dry sand or the so called live sand that comes wet in a bag which is basically a nice way to go because it's pre-rinsed and fairly easy to use. Base rock is live rock, corral rock that's been collected on land and has no life on it, it's shipped dry but you can use it to cheat out your tank, basically you place the base rock in the tank underneath the live rock. And the live rock is rock that's collected in the ocean and shipped damp to your supplier. It often needs curing which means certain things that are on the rock are going to die off so it'll need a little bit of time before it's actually good to place in a tank that has fish in it. So you should be placing your live rock in the tank first and waiting to see if the die off has finished. One way to tell if the die off is finished is to actually pick up the rock and smell it. If it smells like a rotten egg, it still needs some more curing time. But the best way to test to see if your live rock is cured is to do a test of the ammonia levels."