How many fish can I get if I have a10 gallon saltwater tank.?

Question

Feel free to give me any other suggestions having this is my first saltwater tank.

Answer 1

One, maybe. A 10 gallon tank is very small, especially for saltwater. SW fish need more room and are much more delicate than FW fish. I know it sounds weird, but bigger is better. 50 gallons is the recommended minimum size for a SW tank, and many experienced aquarists fail with nano tanks (SW tanks that are under 30 gallons). It is a LOT more work to maintain - water params must be tested EVERY DAY. Water temperature must be constantly monitored, and you may need a chiller if it gets too warm in the summer. You will need to top off water daily and manually remove excess food / fish poop.

In theory, if you were to succesfully establish and cycle a 10 gallon tank, and had the time and money to properly monitor the levels, you could get one blenny, or one goby, or one clownfish, and a small coral, and some invertebrates.

I hope you'll rethink getting a 10 gallon SW tank. If all you can have / afford in a 10 gallon tank, well, there are plenty of gorgeous FW fish out there that would fit in a 10 gallon tank. Or, don't rush into fish. Set up your tank slowly, and stick with invertebrates for many months, only getting a fish when you are 100% certain you know exactly how your tank is.

If you can, though, get a bigger tank. You can probably find a complete, used set-up (over 60 gallons) with live rock, live sand, sump, skimmer, metal halides or actinic lights for less than 1000$!

Either way, please do all the research you can, and try not to cut corners. Good luck!

Answer 2

If you have never kept a marine tank, just don't go there with a 10gal. If you are only considering a heater and pH test kit, you don't have the experience to run a nano marine tank. It's not just "tricky", it will need daily testing and adjusting of the parameters, and that's not just pH. Then you end up with a tank that might support 1 tiny fish and a couple of shrimp. Not trying to be rude, just trying to save you from a lot of dead fish. So 1 - freshwater. 2 - small community fish. Dwarf or sparkling gourami, neon tetras, guppies, platies etc. 3 - No algae eating fish are suitable, but snails and shrimp are a good option. You will need a heater unless you stick with a very limited range of fish. pH is actually about the least important thing in fish keeping. Sure it's easy to measure, and you can buy chemicals to play with the levels, but too many beginners fuss about the pH, trying to keep that "perfect", when there are more important issues going wrong. Unless you have very sensitive fish, and understand a bit more about water chemistry, just leave the pH alone. Ian

Answer 3

Listen to Zoe she's right. It is possible to have a 10ga. saltwater in fact i have a 10 ga. saltwater but I only use it for hurt fish usually and just remember things can change in a 10ga saltwater tank overnight so be careful with it i would try and put a damsel in there they can stand more water changes and not so perfect water most the time. If its in you price range a bigger tank would be much better and easier on you, and even cheaper if you end up going thru several high priced saltwater fish.

Answer 4

No matter how many gallons of water you have it is always recommended that you have 1 inch of fish per Gallon of water. I have a 29 gallon fish tank and I dont like for my tank to be crowded with 29 fish. I think that you could buy 3 fish each measuring about 2 or 3 inches each. Happy Fish kepping!! Oh and by the way the fin of the fish doesnt count!!

Answer 5

Don't think about fish yet. You are stepping into a complicated and highly rewarding hobby. But, acquiring fish for a marine tank is not something you do in the beginning.

The basis for a successful tank is filtration which leads to chemical stability in the environment. Until you achieve this, fish will die in your tank.

So, the first thing you should do is buy some substrate (sand) and some live rock.

If you have never bought live rock before, it is going to strike you as really weird. Live rock is coral skeleton fragments that are highly porous, sit on the bottom of the ocean, and get infused with thousands of micro-organisms.

The microorganisms in live rock and in your sand are the basis for success and stability in your aquarium. Ten gallons is a very small and unstable size for a marine aquarium, so you should buy about twenty pounds of live rock for your tank. I wouldn't go below 15.

Buy some aragonite sand at the same time, not silica-based. Your sand bed should be either less than two inches or greater than 4 inches.

You need some physical or mechanical filtration to go with your biological filtration. Do yourself a favor, and get a protein skimmer. It removes crud from your tank physically through foam fractionization. This is like the wave action of the ocean, and it rids the water of organic pollutants by removing them from the water column.

Set up your tank with sand, rock, and a skimmer. Seed your sand with live sand from the pet shop. Get your initial ten gallons of water already mixed from the pet shop. Let it run for four to six weeks. Get a test kit. Measure ammonium, nitrite, and nitrate. When your ammonium and nitrite are zero, you are ready to add precious few fish to this nanotank.

The compounds above are poison to fish. Bacteria converts ammonium to nitrite, and nitrite to nitrate. But, that bacteria colony needs time to grow before you add fish. If you don't, your fish essentially poison themselves to death with their own waste.

Check this site out for any and all marine aquairum questions. The host, Bob Fenner, is the marine aquarium God of the US. He is warm and gracious. Read first before you ask him a question (out of respect for his time).

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/marine/index.htm

Answer 6

I would say one or two at most. And these would be very small fish.

Perhaps one shrimp as well.