30 gallon tank

Aquarium Lover answers:

How old are you crystal? Sounds liek your parents would be doing most of the work here.

In a 30 gallon tank you can have 2 clownfish, make sure they are either a male and a female or two babies.
Anemones are poisonous but if they touch the palm of your hand they dont hurt too bad.
It doesn’t matter where in the tank you put them they will move around to find a spot that they like.
Anenomes need very powerful light, which is expensive, and really good healthy water, so they are fairly hard to keep.

Aquarium Lover answers:

No taking salt water from the ocean is not illegal for the last damn time

i just wanted the points

Aquarium Lover answers:

There’s a difference in what you CAN set up, and what you can keep successfully. There’s a lot of “nano” in both fresh and saltwater these days, and I saw an article in one of the major magazines (this was a few years ago) of saltwater tanks less than a gallon (no fish).

The answer that mentioned stability has it right – the smaller of a tank that you have, the harder thay are to keep. Not only do you have a stable temperature to worry about, you have less volume for dilution of wastes (and marine fish tend to be more sensitive to poor water quality), but there’s the problem of chaning salinity as the water evaporates.

Also, consider that most marine fish tend to be larger and more territorial than freshwater “community” fish. You mention oscars, so to make an analogy you might relate to, keeping marines would be more similar to keeping cichlids – there aren’t many I’d try in a 5 gallon tank as adults. Damsels, for their size, are quite agressive, and they can grow 3-6 inches (some will be even larger). Chances are, if there were damsels in a 5 gallon, these were juveniles about 1 to 1 1/2 inches. Only about 3 fish types (clown gobies, smaller shrimp gobies, and firefish) should be kept in 10 gallon tanks as adults – everything else should be in a larger tank.

The smallest size I would recommend to someone just beginning in saltwater is a 29 gallon. That’s enough for 3-4 smaller fish. If you don’t want fish, only inverts, I’d go as small as a 20 gallon long (that would be large enough for a pair of percula or ocellaris clowns and an anemone), plus other inverts. You should know before you try this, that clowns and anemones are specific about which species are compatible. You can’t randomly put a pair of clowns with any anemone and expect them to use it – some anemones won’t host clowns at all: http://www.bestfish.com/tips/032698.html

Also, when you get fish for the tank (assuming you plan more than one species), it’s best not to mix members of the same family, or fish of the same color and/or body shape as a way to further reduce aggression between fish in your tank. Few can be kept as a mated pair, and even fewer are truely “schooling” in captive conditions. If you get clowns, it’s best to buy them as juveniles and add them together. If one should die, don’t get a replacement until you are able to replace both – the remaining fish rarely accepts a new mate.