The decision to start a saltwater tank is not a quick or easy one. Even hobbyists who have maintained freshwater tanks successfully will admit that a saltwater tank is not a simple undertaking. The water chemistry alone is much more difficult to maintain in a saltwater tank. There's no reason to make things exponentially more difficult by picking temperamental fish. In this article, we will provide a list of good starter fish for the beginner. Before we provide the list, we'll discuss how we decided whether a fish would be a good candidate for the beginner. We also include a short warning list of fish that you should pass over tour first time around with a marine environment. We'll conclude this article with a short list of online sources for marine livestock.
What makes a fish a good candidate for beginners?
Before we get to our list of suggested fish, let's discuss what attributes we used to help us decide which fish to recommend.
Compatibility
With compatibility, we consider how well the fish will do in a community setting. The two things you want to consider is whether the fish will prey on other fish in the tank or how aggressive it is likely to act towards other fish in the same tank.
Hardy/Undemanding Constitution
In general, saltwater fish are more sensitive to tank fluctuations than freshwater fish. That's because in nature, fresh water fish are more used to changing conditions in their water than saltwater fish would ever have to be. Compared to saltwater fish in the ocean, freshwater fish are used to smaller water volumes that have greater fluctuations in quality and temperature. That said, there are some saltwater fish that are a little more adaptable than others. We'll use this as a measure of how good a fish is for beginners.
Feeding Requirements
With feeding, one can make another broad statement in saying that pound for pound, saltwater fish normally expend more energy than freshwater fish in order to live. Saltwater fish have a lot more work to do to maintain their proper body chemistry. But just eating more isn't problematic. The problem one sees with many saltwater fish is their requirement for live food. Good beginner fish aren't that picky with what they will eat.
Price
Some saltwater fish are just going to be much more expensive than others. For example, using prices off of LiveAquaria.com (Doctors Smith and Foster's live fish site), we can compare the following prices for saltwater fish (for comparison purposes, let's stick with fish that would grow to a maximum size of 2-3" in the tank):
| Type of Fish |
Price |
| Blue Damselfish |
$4.99 |
| Brown Clown Goby |
$8.99 |
| True Percula Clownfish |
$14.99 |
| Neon Blue Goby |
$18.99 |
| Swissguard Basslet |
$88.99 |
| Firefish, Helfrichi |
$159.99 (and that's on sale!) |
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Now you can see why we include damselfish and gobies in our list of suggested fish for absolute beginners. Look at it this way. Of course we all hope for the best and would not want any of your fish to suffer an ill fate. However, if they did, wouldn't you be happy to know that you hadn't blown your budget and that you could invest in a second set of fish?
Even within the same family of marine fish, you'll find a wide range of prices depending on the availability and demand for each kind. For example, looking at Groupers (at the Saltwaterfish.com site),
| Type of Fish |
Price |
| Hamlet - Golden (2-3 inches) |
$49.99 |
| Hamlet - Indigo (2-3 inches) |
$19.99 |
|
From this example alone, we see that just the color of the fish dictates a pretty big price difference. Fine for the serious collector but not a great idea for the absolute beginner! By the way, the Golden Hamlet is quite a beauty compared to the Indigo Hamlet. Since things can be rocky in the beginning when just starting out a Marine tank, the fish price should definitely be a consideration.
Adult Size
You don't have to shoot for a nano tank (a tank that is 20-30 gallons in size) to be worried about the fish size. First of all, remember that the size of that cute little juvenile that you pick up at the store (1-2 inches in length) may grow up to be one or two feet in length! All fish start out tiny! The adult size correlates directly with your tank size since you must provide enough space for your fish to be comfortable. So with our beginner list, we start out with fish that shouldn't outgrow your tank overnight.
Space Requirements
Space requirements are tied closely to the fish's final adult size but you also need to take into account the fish's normal behavior. Marine fish, as a whole, require more breathing room than their freshwater companions. Within the marine world, you have rolling stones and fish that pretty much stay put (well, they don't stay put but they're comfortable in small tidal pools). With that in mind, our list of starter fish only includes fish that would be comfortable in a smaller tank to begin with.
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