Welcome to week five of the beginner, how to guide for saltwater,
aquariums and reef tanks. I'm Matthew from my first fish tank,
working in collaboration with Marine Depot. If you missed episodes, one, two,
three, or four,
I will put a link up here to the entire playlist and a link in the description
below this week.
We're going to discuss all of the essential equipment for a saltwater aquarium,
but be sure not to miss next week,
where we talk about all of the optional or situational equipment.
So if during your research for building a saltwater aquarium,
you've ever asked this question, do I need this stick around?
We're going to jump right in.
Give me the answer
category.
One, the basic necessities.
The first thing you're obviously going to need is a tank.
We're not going to talk about tanks,
but if you check out episode three and episode four,
we talk all about tanks and Stans.
The second basic necessity for your tank is some sort of light.
These range a lot from the style they are from the type of lighting to
their price point and what you're going to buy.
Depends on what you're going to need it for. For example,
if you're going to just get a fish only tank,
you really don't need anything fancy, but if you're going to go high end,
small polyps, Stony corals, or anemones,
then you're going to need to consider something that has a wider spectrum and
puts out more par. So do you need a light? Yeah,
you're going to need a light for a saltwater tank,
but you don't need to go with the most fancy high end light in later videos.
We're going to break down all the different kinds of lights out there,
their price points and what you're going to need.
But one of the essential equipment, things that you're going to need are lights.
The third basic necessity is water. You really need water for two things. One,
you need water for salt, so you need salt water,
and then you need fresh water because every single day your tank is going to
evaporate, which makes the tank saltier and saltier.
So you're going to have to replace that evaporated water.
You really have two ways of going about this. If you live in any major city,
you probably have a local fish store near you. That sells you both fresh water.
That's been heavily filtered. We usually call it our ODI water,
and they'll also sell you saltwater.
So a lot of beginners go this route and they just go to their local fish store
every week and pick up what they need.
You can also go to the grocery store and purchase distilled water.
The still water works really great.
It's a little bit of an expensive option and you have to lug those gallon jugs
back and forth. The last option is to make it yourself at home.
You'll need to purchase RDI filter, but once you get the hang of it,
you're going to save money long run because that rod guy water is going to be
super pure.
And then you just need to buy an appropriate salt mix to mix the salt water
yourself at home.
The fifth and final basic necessity is some sort of a return pump.
Here's just a couple of examples of return pumps.
This is a more inexpensive AC pump. This is a controllable DC pump.
If you mind,
all in one system and one of the systems we're going to talk about later,
it will come up with a return pump and all the return pump does is it returns
the water from your filtration back to the display tank.
And it really is what powers your filtration,
whether or not you go with a more inexpensive AC pump or something that's a
little bit more expensive than a DC pump. We'll discuss at greater length,
but just know you will need some.
Sort of returned on
essential equipment category. Number two, really anything.
Related to filtration.
The first piece of filtration is some sort of mechanical filtration.
You have chemical filtration, biological filtration, and mechanical filtration,
and at a bare minimum, every tank needs some sort of mechanical filtration.
And for mechanical filtration, we're talking about either a filter sock,
some sort of polyester filter, floss, filter fiber,
or some sort of sponge. You can get a lot fancier,
but the essential element is definitely going to be some sort of mechanical
filtration.
The second piece of essential equipment in the filtration support category.
And some people will, will disagree with me here.
Rocks.
Live rock. Technically, can you build a saltwater aquarium without live rock?
Yes, but for every tank we're going to recommend,
we are going to recommend using live rock because
live rock is going to form the basis of your biological
filtration. So yes, you could do a fish only tank. Yes,
you could stock only ceramic media plates or ceramic balls. Yes.
You could use some sort of plastic bio balls as well.
But what we're going to recommend is some sort of live rock.
It comes in different shapes, different colors, different styles.
Some of it's human made. Some of it's pulled from a quarry.
Some of it's pulled from the ocean.
It's going to provide a home for beneficial bacteria to colonize,
to help keep your water parameters stable.
It's also going to provide a place to put your corals.
And it's also going to provide habitat and hiding places for your fish.
And the third piece of essential equipment in the filtration support category is
a basic test skin. I have a whole shelf of test kits, no joke.
I have 50 different test kits out there, but at a bare minimum,
you need something that's gonna test for your nitrogen cycle.
Something that's gonna test for your ammonia,
for your nitrite and for your nitrate. And as you grow in this hobby,
as you add corals, and as you add more invertebrates,
you will also need to test for calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity as well.
But if you're going to pick up one basic test kit,
get this water master test kit from API, it's affordable,
I'd say 90% of beginners use it.
It works just fine.
That's third category of.
Essential equipment is maintenance and everything else we couldn't put into the
other categories first up is a refractometer or something to measure your
salinity with absolutely essential. There are different ways to do this.
You could get a hydrometer, but they're just not as accurate.
When for 20 to $50, you can pick up this piece of equipment.
I've had this for five years.
This is a refractometer and it will give you an accurate reading of the
solidity. If you want to go a little bit,
fancier Hannah instruments and other companies as well make these digital
probes, but these, you have to calibrate frequently.
So if I was to recommend one thing for testing your salt water,
it would be a refractometer.
The second essential piece of equipment is going to be a mesh screen.
I'm going to call it a central. Yes,
you could go with some sort of glass canopy,
but we typically don't do those much in the saltwater hobby anymore.
Some people really like a clean look and they don't want to put a mesh screen
on, and that could work. If you have fish that you know, don't jump,
but you will be surprised at how many different fish will take that dive.
And you'll find them dry and dead on the floor. So do yourself a favor.
If yours doesn't come with a mesh screen,
then make one yourself or have something custom made for you.
It will protect your fish.
The third piece of maintenance essential equipment you're going to need is an
Audi scraper. I'd actually recommend getting two Audi scrapers.
You have your basic mechanical handheld algae scrapers.
They come different shapes, different sizes,
but you also have magnetic algae scrapers.
And I would really recommend both because on a daily basis or a couple of times
a week,
you're going to want to use a magnetic allergy scraper to clean the inside of
your tank.
But sometimes there will be places where you're magnetic scraper just won't get.
And that's when you're going to want a handheld Audi scraper next up our fish
nets. They are so inexpensive, different shapes, different sizes.
Do yourself a favor by several of different sizes.
Even if you don't plan on using fish nets,
you plan on using a gloved hand or some sort of container.
You'll be surprised at how often these come in handy.
The fifth essential maintenance item you're going to need is going to need some
sort of food, fish, food, coral, food, whatever. There's frozen food.
There's dry food. You can get food and pellets. This is coral food,
flaked food allergy strips at a bare minimum.
You're going to want some sort of pellet or some sort of flake as a backup.
As you get into the hobby, different fish will have different diets.
You just want to make sure you have enough of the right kind of food,
always in your house.
The six thing you're going to need for maintenance is what I call it.
Gravel back. I think they're called a gravel back. Basically,
this is handy for a couple different things. One,
it helps keep your substrate clean because you can just kind of pinch this line
and suck out little bits of detritus.
It also just helps you with general water changes.
And this is what I use several times a week to do water changes on all my tanks.
They come in small sizes, many sizes and large sizes. So just choose the size.
It's right for you.
It may be pick up a couple different sizes because they come in super handy and
the final piece of essential equipment, you're going to need
buckets. Don't shortchange yourself here.
Get buckets of different sizes because you are going to use these for
all sorts of things and get more buckets than you think you'll need,
because they're so inexpensive. And they're so useful in this hobby.
Just make sure that whatever buckets you use,
you only use them for your saltwater aquariums and not for any other purpose in
the house. That's it short and sweet this week.
If you watch that entire video and you're still like, Hey,
but what about this piece of equipment?
Or what about that piece of equipment tune in next week?
I'm sure we're going to talk about it.
If you found this video helpful in any way,
please consider giving it a thumbs up subscribing to Marine Depot and to my
first fish tank and as always happy reefing be well.
We'll see you next week, everybody.