What size of aquarium should I buy?

What size of aquarium should I buy?

Marc Grover (Professional Aquarist) gives expert video advice on: Where should I put the aquarium?; What type of light does my aquarium need?; Should I use gravel or sand in my aquarium? and more...

When you are looking at purchasing an aquarium, there are some things you have to consider. It's really tough when you're first getting into a hobby like this, to know how much you're going to like it. People that aren't sure, should not run out and buy a 200 gallon salt water aquarium because that's a lot of money to invest, a lot of labor, it's big, and it's very overwhelming. So, what I tell people to do is, start off small, where small is indicated by being 10 gallons or 20 gallons. In this example, I'm thinking fresh water. If you start to like it and you know you want to upgrade, what I tell people to do is, don't go the next size up, and then the next size up, and so forth. Then you go to my number one theory, which is buy as big a tank as you can fit comfortably in the space you want to put it, and that you can comfortably afford, and skip all the little tanks on your way up to that tank, because you're ultimately going to get there anyway, and I just saved you a lot of money and got you to where you were going to go in the first place.