Reef Aquarium Books
You'll do well to pick up some reef aquarium books before jumping into the deep end of setting up a saltwater aquarium for the first time. The most important thing you can do is research. This is especially true of complicated systems employing corals, plants, fish and invertebrates.
One way to get kids and adults interested in reef ecology is to create a saltwater aquarium that contains a sampling of the incredible variety found in these marine "forests." However, to successfully set one up, you'll need to take a crash course yourself. Reef aquarium books are good place to start your journey.
Construction and Set Up
For starters, you're likely be setting up a rather large tank. Twenty-five gallons is considered the absolute minimum, with 50 gallons and up being far more common in practice. The tolerance of reef creatures to nitrates and low oxygen conditions is far less than what you may be used to with freshwater fish, so there will undoubtedly be a large investment in equipment.
By taking time and very slowly introducing corals and motile animals into the reef system, you'll give everything a chance to acclimate before you put more in. Taking time to allow the macro and micro flora to establish will make you that much more likely to achieve success with your first saltwater aquarium set-up.
Choosing a Community
Many reef systems are doomed to fail because they are chosen because they look pretty. This is not a good way to choose the members of your closed ecosystem. Reading books that can give you as much information about each species as possible, with pictures, will give you a much better idea what to expect. You need to not only know what their temperature and feed requirements are, but typical behaviours and life-cycle information. Even if you meet all the physical requirements of a fish, if it is terrorized by another and has no where safe to hide, it can simply sicken and die, stressing the whole environment.
Maintenance
You need to have a fairly good idea of the tolerances you need to keep the new reef aquarium within before you add even the first rock. Measurements are made incessantly throughout the life of the aquarium. You'll be checking daily for temperature, nitrates, oxygen levels and other solutes.
When you carefully design a system to include more than sufficient filtering, you eliminate much of the tedious cleaning maintenance, but you will still need to make sure someone is available to keep an eye on things if ever you can't. With the help of reef aquarium books, you should be able to create a tank that will last for years.
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