I read many times , hobbyist who have been keeping freshwater fish forever, say man!! if Saltwater wasnt so expensive and difficult, id sure like to give that a try. Well Ladies and Gentlemen, im here to tell you, if you want a saltwater tank , you can have one without taking out a loan Mind you it wont be a full blown reef with corals so thick, you cant see the rock but, It will none-the- less be your first saltwater aquarium.

You probably have an empty tank setting around somewhere, if youre like most of us so dust it off, and lets go. First you need substrate, the method i chose for my first tank was the DSB (deep sand bed method) which is somewhat controversial, but it worked for me, This should consist of at least 1# per gallon of an aragonite mixture as follows; * 15% Live Oolitic Aragonite Sand to seed the bed taken from an established system that has been in operation for a year or more to allow for as much colinazation as possible by all kinds of beneficial critters from the system.
* 45% Dry Oolitic Aragonite Sand
* 25% CaribSea Reef Sand
* 15% CaribSea Aruba Shell
I started with the live sand on the bottom and the above mixture placed on top to a level of about 3 inches.

Next add some base rock at about the same ratio, this is just as good as premium rock but less expensive and will make up the bulk of the rock in the tank, next if you want you can add some nice fiji or other rock placed throughout the reef, pick some with nice coraline coverage (pink and orange if possible, It will spread as the tank matures.

Now mix your water( at the rule of thumb ammount of 1 cup per gallon of water, use any good sea salt, i prefer instant ocean. which should give you about a specific gravity of about 22-23. I found with type of system i didnt even need a big expensive filter so i just used a small aqua-flo, this was on a 20 gallon tank, so i also added a small powerhead to effect circulation of water thru the rock and purify and remove waste produced by the fish, and eventually broken down into harmless residue.

I purchased a small yellow tailed damsel as my cycling fish, as they are cheap and serve the purpose very well, Thats it, youre now a saltwater hobbyist on a budget. The lighting doesnt matter because fish dont really care about the light, and you dont have corals to worry about with this setup, so just set back and enjoy.

I recommend a 20% water change after about 2 weeks with the same mixture listed above. I chose to always use R/O water which i purchased in 5 gallon containers pre-mixed from my Dealer, but you can mix your own and save some more money. as time goes on you can add a few more small fish and a few inverts, but keep the stocking very low, remember this is a small tank, so dont blow out the system by putting too much load on it.