Saltwater Aquarium DIY

Saltwater organisms require a bit more care than freshwater animals when it comes to changing environments. The water from the pet store or online retailer is going to be different from the water in your home aquarium. To creatures used to living in the vast, stable oceans those differences can come as quite a shock. Sometimes the differences can be deadly. There are a lot of critical factors in acclimating your fish or invertebrates to their new home. Temperature, PH, and Salinity are but a few of those factors. However, the great equalizer for all of those factors is TIME. Spreading those changes over time allows your new addition to gently make its adjustment to your aquarium. A few simple steps can prevent unnecessary and expensive tragedies from occurring in your saltwater tank.

You can learn how to acclimate your fish and invertebrates with my article, How to Acclimate Saltwater Fish & Invertebrates.

Quarantine Tanks and Hospital Tanks

I highly recommend using a quarantine tank to prevent the spread of disease from your new marine life, much of which is wild caught and may carry unknown disease vectors, to your older tank residents. Also, there may be times when a fish gets sick and it needs to be medicated with chemicals the rest of your tank can't or shouldn't tolerate.

To learn how to always be prepared for such an occasion without having to keep a spare tank up and running all the time read my article, DIY Hospital Quarantine for Saltwater Reef Aquarium.

Rotifers are tiny invertebrates that often are raised as food for live corals and fish larvae. They are the ideal starter food for species of fish such as neon gobies and certain types of clownfish, which have tiny larvae with very, very tiny mouths. Rotifers can be fed to these fish larvae until the more easily available and more easily cultured baby brine shrimp will fit into their mouths. Rotifers also provide a wonderful source of nutrition for live corals and filter feeders.

However, buying rotifers to feed directly to your reef tank can be quite expensive. If you need more rotifers than for occasional feedings, I highly recommend raising your own. If you are a reef keeper already you certainly have the skills to do this! Compared to many aspects of saltwater husbandry, it is remarkably easy to culture rotifers.

You can learn how to culture rotifers in my article, How to Culture Rotifers to Feed to Your Live Coral or Fish Larvae.

One common method of controlling waste products in a reef aquarium is to frequently change the water, replacing water full of waste nutrients like nitrates with newly made, clean saltwater. This is very effective - the contaminated water is diluted by the new water, lowering the levels of nitrates and other waste nutrients. Unfortunately, one cannot do this often enough to keep nitrates low enough for reef aquarium health without spending a lot of money on salt mix and expending a lot of effort mixing and changing the saltwater.

A plenum provides another solution. Click here to read more about what a plenum is and what it does.

A plenum serves as a place to grow nitrate eating bacteria in your saltwater aquarium. This article explains, step by step, how to build a plenum for your saltwater aquarium.

Nitrates build up in a cycled aquarium as a result of bacteria processing fish wastes into nitrites and then nitrates. Nitrates are a harmful waste product if their levels get too high. Fortunately, there are also bacteria which eat nitrates. Unfortunately, those bacteria can't thrive in the same water conditions your fish and invertebrates need to survive. Nitrate eating bacteria require very low oxygen concentrations to live.

A plenum is basically a riser that is placed under the sand or crushed coral of the saltwater aquarium to make an "empty" gap between the bottom of the tank and the bottom of the sand or crushed coral. A plenum provides a separate area of poorly oxygenated water for the de-nitrifying bacteria to thrive without depriving the fish and invertebrates in your saltwater aquarium of the oxygen they need to breathe.
Learn How to Build a Plenum for a Saltwater Aquarium