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Im thinking about starting a small SW tank, to try it. Whats the smallest tank thats suitablel for SW? It'll be awhile before i get one,yet, but I am wondering. Has anybody kept a 1g?

Inky

If you want to keep a little glass box with some saltwater in it 1G would be fine. No fish would do well in this size tank. keeping water parameters stable in a 20G is hard enough, and I wouldn't recommend anyone start with anything smaller. The larger your first SW tank is, the easier it will be for you.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Do you know of any inverts, or something small like that, that could be kept in that small of a tank? Hermit Crabs or Snails mabey?

Inky

You can keep shrimp, small hermits, snails, some crabs, as long as you have no fish. If you want a small tank, you can do a 10gal, add a lot of live rock, a few shrimp, snails, hermits, starfish, etc. You will have to watch yoru water very close. Keep the water level the same by topping the tank off daily.

Dan


Dan

The problem with SW, is that if the biological filter starts to crash, it will do so very quickly. Much, much faster than any FW tank. And in a 1 gal, it can happen in a matter of hours. So your whole tank could crash and die in just a few hours if anything went wrong. This is why a larger tank is alway recommended over a smaller one. Especially for beginners. As the smaller the tank is, the more often it requires testing.

As for a one gal tank, I would not recomend it at all. I would not recomend anything smaller than a 10 gal to anyone. Think about it this way, if late at night, you have just one of your critters in it die, there will be a drastic ammonia spike that will kill off all your biological bacteria, thus the ammonia will increase drastically higher, and kill everything in the tank, before you wake up. So just one of the crabs dieing could cause the death of the entire tank, just over night.

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There is always a bigger fish...

Thats upsetting.


If I move into a home, I can probubly get a bigger tank. A 10g may be nice. I don't want to have too many 10g tanks scattered around though....

Inky