First up bigger is better.
Hey, everybody, Matthew here from my first fish tank,
working in collaboration with Marine Depot and welcome to week four of the
beginner, how to guide to saltwater aquariums and reef tanks.
If you watched week three,
you'll remember that I bored myself into stopping the video and making it
into a two part series. So this is part two of tanks and stands.
If you Ms. Weeks, one, two or three,
I'll put a link up here to the entire playlist and I'll put the links to each
video below the fold and the description links to the Marine Depot tanks and
stand page, as well as the accompanying.
My first fish tank blog brought to you by my blog.
Our Macs are also in the description below without further ado, let's get to it.
Yeah.
Patient when deciding what type of saltwater tank to buy is size.
Obviously smaller tanks costs less money and larger tank costs more money,
but there are a lot of things to consider. We do not recommend small tanks.
Let's say 10 gallons or under for beginners, but why? Well,
here's why beginners make mistakes.
And a small mistake in a small amount of water can lead to wild and
rapid water parameter shifts. If you're an old pro in the hobby,
you might be able to recognize the signs of stress and you'll know what to do to
mitigate that stress before it balloons into something huge.
But if you're a beginner,
you're not going to recognize the initial signs of stress because you don't have
the experience. And by the time you recognize it,
it may be too late and you may not know what to do. So with a larger system,
let's say something like 20 gallons to 75 gallons.
If a beginner keeps up on their water, changes in water testing,
they'll be able to recognize problems before they get blown out of proportion
and take steps to save their tank.
So if we had to sum up why bigger is better because bigger tanks mean that
problems are diluted in the larger amount of water,
which gives the beginner more time to recognize problems and to come up with
solutions. Okay. So if bigger is better, does that mean that a big tank,
120 to 240 gallon is a good beginner tank? No,
I would also say a very large tank is a bad beginner option.
Why don't I typically recommend big tanks for beginners? Well, first of all,
big tanks are very, very pricey. We're talking thousands of dollars.
So that's often not in the budget realm of most beginners when something goes
wrong in a big tank and trust me, it will go wrong in a big tank.
It can be a huge headache. I mean,
imagine trying to get rid of hair algae on a 20 gallon tank. Well,
it's going to take so much more effort and so much more time to remove that hair
algae from 120 gallon system,
large tanks can over-complicate things for beginner.
When you have a larger tank,
you might be tempted to try all sorts of things that really aren't good beginner
options.
And you may fall into this trap of trying to correct every single little thing
with some new sort of filtration method. It's just not a good idea.
It's much better for beginner to keep things simple.
And also with a larger tank, that means you can put a lot more livestock in it.
And learning about livestock is challenging because every single different
species of livestock has its own quirks. So with a larger tank,
you're going to be more tempted to add more tines of livestock.
And you're going to run into more things like disease and aggression issues.
So a smaller tank will just mean you have to limit yourself a little bit more.
So what are the pros of a larger tank?
Greater water volume means that beginner mistakes will be diluted out.
And the second pro is you can put in more fish and more inverts in a larger
tank. What are the cons of a larger tank? Number one,
it's significantly more expensive. And number two,
it gives beginners too many options which can overwhelm them.
So if a small tank is not a good beginner option and a big tank is not a great
beginner option, what size do we recommend?
I'd say somewhere between 15 and 60 or 75 gallons,
if you can afford a 40 gallon tank, I just think that's a really good,
sweet spot.
It's large enough and has enough water volume to dilute out a lot of those
beginner mistakes. And you can also put quite a bit of fish and inverts in them.
The sixth consideration when deciding.
What sort of saltwater tank to buy are, what are your end livestock goals?
If you're getting into this hobby,
because there is one sort of fish that you absolutely can't live without,
then you may need to design your entire system around that one fish.
What do I mean by that? Let's take a trigger fish as an example, you know,
that Houma nuke, NewCo, right? The thing you see,
if you're snorkeling or scuba diving in Hawaii, all over the place, well,
you need to know a few things. First. First of all,
a trigger fish is aggressive, so it will often eat other fish.
Second of all, triggerfish is,
can get quite large and they will need a system from 150 gallons all the way up
to 300 gallons. That's a big tank and lastly, they will eat corals.
So if you want to keep corals, then you can't have a trigger fish.
I was a teacher for many years and we use this thing called backwards design.
We said, what do we want our students to learn?
And then we designed the whole curriculum around that. Well,
if there is one fish you cannot live without, then use that same method.
Start with that as your end goal,
do your research and build your entire system around that.
Or if you're like me and like most beginners,
you don't really necessarily care what things you're going to put in there
because there are so many cool options for saltwater tank that you'd be happy
with a lot. So just stick with us and stick with this series.
We will give all sorts of build lists in future episodes,
from various price points so that you can build a tank and put all sorts of
cool.
The seventh.
When buying a saltwater tank are, what shapes does it come in?
Just consider the various shapes because the shape will determine where you can
put it in your house for best viewing angles.
If you were to custom make an acrylic tank,
you could get that in a whole bunch of different shapes,
but your standard glass shapes are a square, a rectangle, a bow front tank,
which just means the front pain is at an angle.
And there are some tanks that have rounded edges.
That's basically it.
The eighth.
Final consideration is what style is the tank saltwater aquarium.
Hobbyists use all sorts of jargon when describing different shapes and
sizes of tanks. So let's talk about them real quick.
So you have an understanding of what we're talking about.
The first up is a rim tank.
This could be either a standard plastic rim that black rim you see around
Petco or PetSmart tanks, but it could also be a Euro brace tank,
which takes pieces of glass and silicones them to the inside of the tank to
give it more strength. The second is a rimless tank.
This is exactly the opposite.
It is a tank without a rim that is only held together by its silicone
seams. And it gives a very clean, infinite, modern look to your tank.
This is definitely the most popular type of tank out there today.
The third style is a cube.
A cube tank is basically a square or very, very close to a square.
And it's almost always a rimless tank. The fourth is a peninsula tank.
These are long rectangular shape where one of the short edges sits
against the wall and you have the two long glass edges for viewing.
The fifth is a frag tank.
A frag is just a small fragment frag of a larger coral.
These things usually have a shorter depth so that the light can penetrate the
water easier.
And so that you can quickly access your frags without having to put your whole
arm in the water. The sixth is a lagoon tank. Really?
This is any sort of tank that mimics the often brackish water,
low flow environment of a lagoon.
These tanks typically are shorter and have a wider footprint and are a perfect
place for planting mangroves. The seventh style of tank is a drop-off tank.
A drop-off tank is any tank that has two separate levels.
And its goal is to mimic the edge of a coral reef where it drops off into the
abyss and the eighth and final style of tank that you hear people talk about all
the time is a breeder tank. Most commonly, a 40 gallon breeder tank.
This is just a standard rectangular shape,
36 inches by 18 inches by 16 inches.
You can find them in 30 gallon sizes,
but I have almost only heard people exclusively talk about a 40 gallon breeder
tank. And I don't know if you can see it,
but my quarantine tank slash frag tank is actually a 40 gallon reader.
It was a lot of information about tanks,
and we're finally on to the second part of this video, which will be very,
very short. Do I need to stand? And if so,
what sort of stance should I buy the answer to the first part?
Do I need to stand maybe, but maybe not.
If you have a larger tank, let's say above 20 gallons,
you'll probably need a stand, but if you have a smaller tank, 2015, 10 gallons,
even you could probably get away with placing it on a sturdy desk or countertop.
When we're talking about aquarium stands,
we're usually talking about specific pieces of equipment that are custom made
for specific aquariums. Yes, aquarium Stan could be a sturdy desk.
It could be a countertop. It could be a side table,
but typically an aquarium Stan is something custom made and built for a
specific aquarium.
Really every single aquarium stand I've ever seen has been made of one of three
types of material, either a solid wood,
some sort of composite wood or some sort of metal.
A Stan serves all sorts of different functions. First of all,
it can be an aesthetically pleasing addition to your tank. Uh,
Stan can also hide a lot of your equipment and it's a place where you can do
your wire management. So you don't have to look at it.
One of the primary functions of a stand is to hold the weight because water is
very, very heavy. Uh, sand also lifts your aquarium off the ground.
So you can have an easier viewing experience. And lastly, if you have a sump,
typically a stand holds your sump.
So do I need a stand or can I use a countertop or can I use a desk?
It's really just going to depend on the weight.
If you're going to have a 20 gallon or less, see 20 gallons times 860,
170 pounds, basically a 20 gallon tank might be 170 pounds.
If you have a sturdy countertop or a sturdy desk,
it could probably hold that weight. But anything bigger than that,
I would probably get a stand that's custom built,
just so you know that it can evenly distribute all of that weight.
And can you build your own stand? I would say, of course you can,
but do it at your own risk. If you don't know what you're doing,
you could make it incorrectly. The stand could fail,
or you could make it with some inconsistencies in the top of the stand,
which could lead to cracks.
And a catastrophic tank failure.
Now that your mind may be melting with aquarium tank and stand
information, we returned to the initial question.
What sort of aquarium should you buy? Obviously,
there is no easy answer and we are going to give you several recommendations in
a later video, but if you want to start planning now and dreaming,
now here's our general recommendation.
Go with something 20 to 60 gallons with a rear filtration
chamber, also known as an all-in-one tank. If you want to browse all these,
just go to Marine Depot, check out the link below.
They have several different brands that are all in one systems in this
size range, from innovative Marine to water box to red sea.
You can also go to my first fish tank.com and click on our aquarium setup
guides.
Our blogger max has recently revamped all of these and these were specially
curated to make sure all the equipment plays really nicely together.
And you can find a bill list for every budget from $220 all the way up to
$14,000. All right, everybody, that's it for a week three.
Thank you for watching. Be sure to join us next week for week four,
where we're going to break down all of the essential equipment you need for a
saltwater aquarium as always. Thank you for watching.
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