What supplies do I need for a saltwater aquarium?

What supplies do I need for a saltwater aquarium?

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're starting a salt water aquarium, you're going to need some of the same basic things as you do for a freshwater tank. You need a tank body itself, and with salt water typically you want to start with a little bit bigger tank than you would with freshwater, because it easier for the fish to acclimate into a bigger environment. You're going to need biological filtration - the heart of the system is going to be different from freshwater. With the freshwater you have an under gravel filter, but in a salt water tank you're going to use a wet dry trickily filter. When you use that type of filter, what I like people to do is have the aquarium ordered with an overflow pre filter box built into it, because that's how the water gets transported out of the aquarium into the filtration below the aquarium and then pumped back up into the aquarium again. You will need sand as a substrate as opposed to gravel. The decorations are a little bit different - you can get into live rock or you can get into inert rock. You'll need temperature control because they are tropical, so you'll need a heater as well. The lights can be a little bit different so you need a lot of the same equipment. It's different types of the same type of equipment.