Saltwater Fish

 Saltwater Fish Page

Setting up an aquarium and filling it with saltwater fish can be an entertaining, relaxing and fulfilling hobby.  Keeping your own slice of the ocean in your home and recreating that piece of the reef can provide hours of enjoyment for you and your family (kids love watching fish too).  Saltwater reef fish are some of the most beautiful animals in the world, often displaying exotic colors, beautiful flowing fins and interesting, sometimes down-right quirky behavior.   If this is the first time you are considering setting up a tank to keep saltwater fish, consider reading these articles here, designed to help you make good choices with placing those first fish:

Saltwater Fish Advice for Setting Up a New Tank:

Yellow Tang

Everyone has their own opinion about what fish to add to a new saltwater fish tank.  One of the biggest problems with new tanks is a phenomenon called New Tank Syndrome—essentially, new tanks are unstable and oftentimes fish added to a new tank perish quickly—because the environment is too harsh.  The most important thing you can when setting up your new saltwater fish tank is to allow for the time to properly cycle the tank. 

Five Saltwater Fish to Avoid
Because some of the more desirable saltwater fish species command higher prices, some people recommend using inexpensive starter fish.  The problem is that these fish often cause issues down the road.  Read more about Saltwater Fish to Avoid so that you don’t take a first step that will cause you grief down the road.

Five Great Saltwater Fish for Beginners
So now that I started with the glass-half-empty version of what saltwater fish to avoid—you may be wondering, what fish do I recommend starting with?  You will find that your success in the saltwater aquarium hobby is determined by the individual specimens that you obtain.  A sickly individual specimen from a typically ‘hardy’ species will not survive much longer than a fragile sickly specimen.  There are general guidelines and known behaviors of fish at a species level, but you will find that each of your fish has their own unique identity and ‘personality’—which will sometimes be different from what you have heard or read as conventional wisdom.  That said, here is a list to consider—of saltwater starter fish that are great for beginners– I have found these fish to be hardy, boldly colored and interesting to watch. 

What Style of Saltwater Aquarium is Right for You?
Have you thought about setting up a new saltwater aquarium, but aren’t sure what type of tank you should set up? Have you visited online forums and seen them use abbreviations like FO and FOWLR but you didn’t ask what that stands for? Click the link above to learn about some of the more popular types of aquarium set-up and some of the advantages and disadvantages of each style.

Quarantine Tank for Saltwater Fish
The only way to keep new saltwater fish arrivals from contaminating the fish in your display tank is to set up a proper quarantine tank. Click the link above to learn more about the importance of this critical set of equipment.

Saltwater Fish Information for Advanced Aquarists

If you are an ‘old salty’, or an advanced aquarist, looking for information you may not already know about saltwater fish, take a look at some of these other pages.
Clownfish

One of the most popular saltwater fish in the hobby is the clownfish—they are often the cornerstone fish of almost any community saltwater tank display. But did you know that baby clownfish actually use their sense of smell to locate their way back to their home reef after hatching from their eggs, drifting at sea and undergoing metamorphosis?  Read more about the study published about this popular saltwater fish here: Clownfish Use Sense of Smell to Find Their Way Back Home

Saltwater Fish Aggression
Do your saltwater fish display aggression towards each other? While there is no remedy for incompatible species, there has been research to show that the presence of cleaner fish may reduce aggression in fish. Read more about how cleaner fish have been shown to Reduce Saltwater Fish Aggression

Interested in Breeding Saltwater Fish?

Click here to see my absolute favorite book about saltwater fish—which also happens to be the best book about breeding saltwater fish. 

Saltwater Fish Waste is Actually a pH Buffer
To maintain homoeostasis, saltwater fish continuously have to drink water—since the only water they are surrounded by contains salt in it, a compound, called a gut-rock forms.  These gut rocks are excreted by the fish and are now thought to be a significant contributor to the natural buffering capacity of the world’s oceans.

Evolution: Fish Grew Fingers Before Walking on Land
Read about a missing link fossil that has shown evidence that some species of saltwater fish had fingers long before their cousins started walking on land.