jchico1977

Hello all well i was able to start and maintain a 30 gallon fresh water tank. Now i want to start a small 7 gallon salt water tank just 2 small fish. Well my question is what do i need now please remember i just going to have a small tank do i really a protien skimmer any suggestions

Angela_96

For a 7g tank there isn't any fish that would go in that tank. It would be at the smallest a 10g. However, you can put various inverts in there such as sexy shrimp, crabs, snails and corals would be very pretty.
I myself find it an have to have w/ the protein skimmer it really made a difference when I put mine in my biocube. I am going to also turn my 36g bowfront into a reef as well and one of the top things on my list is a protein skimmer.
For SW newbies protien skimmers are important.

Also remember when you are looking at tanks the smaller you get the less stable it will be. I am constantly testinig my 14g and doing waterchanges frequently(at least weekly), and adding calcium every couple weeks. I also ad a chem called seachem reef complete once a week in the "broth" I make that has frozen shrimp/squid, plankton, and zooplan. It does really good feeding my corals, etc. I am only putting 2 fish in my 14g the clownie that I have and a small blenny or gobie.
I am going to put in 3 sexy shrimp very soon though. I found a deal where I can get the little guys for 6 dollars a peice and cheap shipping where there is a group in my area ordering together.

For your tank you will need a filter of some kind (either a small refugium or a reg power filter) a protein skimmer, strong lighting if you will ad corals, live rock and your salt, either a refractometer (recomended) or a hydrometer to measure the salt in the water, and if you have the API master all you will need is the phosphate test, calcium test, and the hardness test.
There are a ton of sw books out there, a good start would be to get one and read it. I have a couple myself and I read a ton before I started my tank. SW isn't as hard as you think, to me there is just a couple more parameters to watch closely and feeding is a little different.
Not to mention the inch per gallon rule doesn't apply to sw its much lower than that, I think its at least only a half inch per gallon.

theyellowdartmti

If you must have a small tank, which I do not reccomend for a first, then I would suggest starting with at least 20 gallons. Smaller tanks, are usually reserved for hobbyists with at least a few years of experiance in saltwater. This is mainly due to the small amount of room for error if something were to happen or break out in your tank (disease, nuisance algae, etc). This doesn't mean that you can't do it, it will just be much more difficult and will increase your chances of something bad happening and ruining your system.
A great place to start is right here; start reading the articles on setting up a marine tank on the homepage of this website. They are very informative and give you most of the info you will need to get started.
IMO, if you are going through with a 7 gallon, you do not need a skimmer on such a small tank... That is if you keep up with weekly water changes.
In place of a skimmer, try setting up a refugium with chaetomorpha macro algae, which many people report to keep their nitrates down at zero.

Lastly, make sure you know what you are getting yourself into. Saltwater is nothing like freshwater. It requires strong dedication and much more money.

Keep doing your research, and good luck!

Matt

theyellowdartmti

Yes there are, small gobies, such as the clown goby, have been kept successfully in tanks as small as 2.5 gallons.

Hypnox

The best advice before starting a SW tank is to read read read. Once you think you've reached your limit for reading, read some more. Before setting up my 10 gallon SW I researched for nearly 1 1/2 months before setup. Spent another 2 weeks just researching basic soft coral needs and regularly spend atleast a week researching any sort of fish/invert I have an interest in adding to any future tanks I want to setup.

nemo addict

Average is 1 inch of fully grown fish to 16 litres of water
Which is around 4 us gallons

Angela_96

Thanks, I was thinking it was a lot smaller fish per tank than FW.