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How Build and Maintain a Salt Water Aquarium

Salt Water Aquarium - Selecting Live Animals

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  • Jim Karanikas

    Marine Biologist, Tropical Fish World

    www.tropicalfishworld.com  
    (301)921-0000

    Jim has over thirty years experience working in a tropical fish store. He started cleaning aquariums for a local pet store at the age of 13. He has kept most every kind of aquarium fish and was one of the first people to successfully breed marine angelfish in captivity. His love for the water got him involved in competitive swimming and coaching. He still swims with a Masters program and recently started competing in triathlons. He earned a degree in Marine Biology from the University of Maryland where he is a founding father of the Maryland chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. Jim has volunteered at the National Aquarium and has given many talks about tropical fish and live coral husbandry to local fish clubs. He opened Tropical Fish World in Gaithersburg, Maryland in 1989. It is a 3000 square foot local aquarium. Many people visit the store just to look around. It was featured in a Washington Post Magazine article, Things to Do off the Beaten Path which suggested walking around the aquarium after eating a meal at the local Dim Sum restaurant. Currently, Jim is involved in setting up and monitoring large custom aquariums that he installs in homes and businesses in the area. He uses an automatic water changing system which allows him to monitor the aquariums from a remote location. He resides in Gaithersburg, Maryland with his three children and can be found in the store most days where he continues to help people enjoy the hobby.

  • Salt Water Aquarium - Selecting Live Animals

    In this video, marine biologist Jim Karinikas of Tropical Fish World, demonstrates how to build and maintain a salt water aquarium.

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  • Transcripts

    Jim Karanikas: Hi! Jim Karanikas, live at Tropical Fish World. We've been talking today about how to set up and maintain a saltwater aquarium. Now, I would like to discuss selecting the live animals for your tank.

    First let's talk about the live tropical fish that you can put in your tank. If you've ever been scuba diving or snorkeling in the Caribbean or any of the tropical areas around the world, you can see these absolutely stunning fishes just surround you.

    I would recommend getting a good book about fish, before you start selecting the fish for your aquarium and putting them in. Many of the books out there actually grade the fish on a scale from 1-10 on how easy they are to keep in captivity, and I think that's a great way of choosing fish that are appropriate for an aquarium and those that should be left in the ocean.

    So after you've gone through the books and you've chosen some of the fish there are many groups of fish that are available. Angelfish are absolutely stunning and pretty easy to keep in captivity, remaining tanks, grasses, groupers, line fish that you can put in your aquarium.

    Now, it's the fish when they are caught from the wild, they could be caught by use of nets or chemicals, and MACNA which is a conservation group monitors the way that the fish were caught in the wild and you want to make sure that is the fish that you are purchasing are MACNA certified or the store that you are getting them from purchased fish from a facility that gets fish that are MACNA certified. And that means that they are taken out of the ocean in ethical way. So you want to make sure that the fish that are being collected are appropriate for your aquarium and are collected in a proper manner.

    You can also purchase fish these days that are captively raised. There are many farms out there that are raising live saltwater fish. 10-15 years ago this wasn't available, so you definitely want to take advantage of that now, and if there is a fish that you are interested in such as clown fish, gobies, dottybacks. I would highly recommend getting once that are captively raised. You also want to make sure that you get fish that are appropriate for the type of set up that you have.

    A fish-only tank can accommodate predatory fish, grazing fish, a fish that hides, fish that sit on the bottom, fish that feed at the top. But in reef tank, you have to get very specific with the fish that you add to it. A reef tank has live corals, sponges, crabs and shrimps, and you don't like to put fish in there that are going to eat those critters. So you want to make sure that you choose appropriate fish for the reef tank.

    Next, we would like to talk to you more about some of the common problems or troubleshooting that we might do for your reef tank.

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