What You Need For Marine Fish Tanks

A marine environment is a salt water environment. Marine fish need different environments than tropical fish to live in, so you will need different equipment if you want to keep a marine fish tank than you would to keep a tropical fish tank.

The main difference between salt water and fresh water tanks is obviously the salt. Do not confuse this with table salt, as it is marine salt that you need.

Warm salt water evaporates at a rapid rate and a large tank can lose 23 litres a week or more, and as salt water fish don’t like big fluctuations in salt an automatic top-up device is recommended to regulate the salinity.

Such a device involves a float switch that is located in the main tank and connected to a pump in the top-up water. The swtich alerts the pump to top up the tank when the level drops.

To tell you how much salt is in the water in the tank you need an essential bit of kit called a hydrometer. These are inexpensive and easy to use, and should always be used when making up water for a water change, and occasionally to check the levels in the main tank. Some of them even have a built in thermometer.

The most important piece of equipment you will need to get is a protein skimmer, which will help to keep the water clean. You should use a protein skimmer with a conventional biolgical filter as well.

Something else you will need for a marine fish tank is a cooler or a chiller. These are a kind of refrigeration unit that is connected to the tank and as water gets pumped through the unit it is cooled down and then returned to the tank. More and more heat is being produced in fish tanks these days because of the large amount of equipment being used that needs power, and marine tanks do not need that much heat.

You may need other equipment for your marine tank as well but these are the basic requirements. Make sure you do some research about the kind of fish you would like to buy and keep in mind that a marine tank can be expensive to run, so you should check out all the possible costs before you buy anything.