Is the idea 'saltwater fish are more difficult than fresh' dated?

fishkeepinginasia

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Hey all,

I often talk to hobbyists who want to keep marine fish, but they say "salt is too hard/complicated." In my opinion, if you're only keeping fish, it's no harder than fresh. I imagine in the early days of the hobby, saltwater fish were more challenging, but these days, especially with captive bred fish like clowns, saltwater is doable for any mid-level hobbyist. But the sigma lingers.

For example, discus. When discus first entered the hobby, they were impossible to keep. These days, they're captive bred and as simple to care for as any fish. Yet people are still afraid to keep them. Everyone is operating on outdated information. I'm wondering if the same holds true for saltwater.

Do you think the idea that saltwater fish are more difficult is a dated? (Please exculde coral from your calculations. Coral, especially SPS, opens a whole new can of worms.) Also, how has the hobby progressed from, say, the 80s to now in terms of easiness? I only began keeping saltwater fish in 2010, so I'm curious what it was like in the early days.
 

scdigby

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i don't think saltwater fish are easier than fresh. One of my co-workers set up a discus tank a few months ago. Filled the tank with TAP water, let it sit for 1 day, and then, with no acclimation at all, dumped 5 discus in the tank, bag water and all. The fish seem pretty happy.
i would NEVER try this with saltwater fish!!
 

homer1475

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Its still tougher, but the gap is certainly narrowing.

I would never use tap water in my reef, yet I do for all my FW tanks. Then you have the added cost, time, and energy to mix salt water, and topping off. If you don't top off a FW tank it just gets low. If you don't top off a SW tank the salinity rises until its certain death for the fish.

Harder to do FOWLR then FW, it all depends on the setup. Fish only SW, and fish only fresh are both pretty easy, but the SW side adds a whole other level. This is of course from the OP neglecting coral keeping at all, and FW planted tanks that can be just as hard if not harder. IMO
 

ichthyogeek

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Hmmm....the thing with freshwater, is that freshwater fish are usually far more adaptive to fluctuating water conditions because they live in freshwater, where rainfall and evaporation are variable. In the ocean, that's a lot of dilution and water currents to keep things fairly stable.

I do disagree with the usage of discus as "as simple to care for as any other fish." I have yet to hear of discus that will thrive in non acidic pH water (7.0+) that isn't heated to a fairly high temperature. They're certainly harder than the more common fish like tetras or corydoras. It doesn't help that the effort of breeding discus in captivity commands a large price tag as well...

This talk by Tal Sweet documents the history of captive rearing of saltwater fish species, which is kind of linked with how we've cared for fish throughout the ages. From classes, I know that the ancient Romans had saltwater ponds (which they may or may not have had eels which they fed with people in....). And speaking of the 1980s, growing up in the 2000s, I read this book like it was the bible, renting it every time my family went to the public library (imagine my shock when I discovered the internet...) . Other books from the same era recommended undergravel filters and bleached coral skeletons. And dolomite.

As for whether saltwater fish are harder than freshwater fish....that's complicated. Sure, if you keep up on your testing and water changes, a damselfish or dottyback will be no harder to care for than, say, a rift lake cichlid. And euryhaline fish like guppies, mollies, and select pseudomugils are technically also saltwater fish and require similar care. But seahorses? dragonets? Anthias? One of the big differences between fresh and salt, is the feeding of the two (as well as the higher toxicity of ammonia in salt/high pH water). As long as the fish can handle higher nitrates and infrequent pellet feedings, the difference is minimal. But if they have specialty needs, that's a whole 'nother ballgame.
 
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ichthyogeek

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Also, FWIW, mostly the RODI stuff vs tap seems to be based not on keeping fish, but instead on keeping coral and other invertebrates. Tap isn't super horrible for the majority of fish. But for the quintessential sessile/mobile inverts we keep? That's a different game. Part of it is because we have super bright lights that help fuel algal growth (which can be spurred by the varying elements present in the tap water).

Part of it is also just due to having to mix your water. When my 55 was a convict cichlid tank, I could just do a 90% water change by draining the tank using the garden hose, then turning the water on and adding water conditioner in order to remove all the nitrates from an overcrowded tank (never. keeping. convicts. again.). And I could do this every day of the weekend. I can't do that now that the 55 is a reef tank...
 

CelestEel

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My parents have a cichlid tank. My dad only tops it off because of evaporation. He does 2 large water changes a year. One in January, one in July. He has never tested his water, and does not own a test kit of any kind. All he uses is a thermometer. Since this is the only freshwater tank I spend any time around, this is the only reference I have to compare saltwater fish to freshwater fish. I don't think I could get away with this approach with saltwater fish.
 

Zionas

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More complex procedures involved? Maybe.

As for the inherent difficulty of the fish themselves, it depends. I think there’s would be plenty of FW fish more demanding in their FW parameters than say, a Damselfish or Captive Bred Clownfish would be in SW parameters.

I love SW a lot more than FW. FW just isn’t appealing to me.
 

Zionas

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Freshwater simply lacks the vibrant colors of a full reef tank. I’m all for the more intricate routines of a saltwater tank if I get to enjoy much more color and what I believe is the most intimate way by far to experience the ocean.

If I ever did a freshwater setup it would have to be like a very species specific, authentically recreated biotope of some kind. For SW I can do a general reef setup, a “cosmopolitan” approach incorporating species from the 3 major oceans.
 

pcon

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I think the difficulty ceiling on salt is higher than fresh. So the hardest marine fish are harder than the hardest freshwater fish. Like the technology for keeping a huge variety of marine fish is just totally lacking. From giant Pelagics or truly deep water fish from the abyssal zone are just unknown.
Similarly I think the difficulty floor for salt is higher than fresh. Beta fish, gold fish, guppies, are all far easier to keep alive than, damsels and clowns. Given this I think that generally it is appropriate to say that marine fish are harder than fresh. That isn’t to say that there are no freshwater fish which are harder than any saltwater fish. The most difficult freshwater fish like wild caught discus are harder than many of the basic easy common Fish from saltwater.
 

ScottR

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I’ve been keeping saltwater fish for over 20 years. Kept FW a few in between. Somehow I managed to kill more FW than SW.
 

Weasel1960

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Before most hobbyists knew you could keep corals (1988) I had a 20 gal tank of FW next to a 20 gal of SW. My FW was several years old my SW was less than a year. I made my own distilled water for both, RODI wasn’t a thing then for most of us. I had a yellow tang, a box fish, and some others on one side and on the other side of a screen in the same tank I had to 2 seahorses. I didn’t test my water, no sump, etc knew enough to do water changes, feed frozen brine shrimp and an occasional FW guppy to each pony. Both of my tanks thrived on a lot less info than I have learned from this forum In the last 30 days. I lost both tanks on a hot summer day when the window A/C unit died while I was at work. I read tonight somewhere that ocean water is 30,000ppm TDS, yet we make RODI to start at 0. I think you could do an FO SW and be successful, it’s the reef that adds the difficulty factor along with the technology advancements for “doing it better”.
 
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fishkeepinginasia

fishkeepinginasia

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I think the difficulty ceiling on salt is higher than fresh. So the hardest marine fish are harder than the hardest freshwater fish. Like the technology for keeping a huge variety of marine fish is just totally lacking. From giant Pelagics or truly deep water fish from the abyssal zone are just unknown.
Similarly I think the difficulty floor for salt is higher than fresh. Beta fish, gold fish, guppies, are all far easier to keep alive than, damsels and clowns. Given this I think that generally it is appropriate to say that marine fish are harder than fresh. That isn’t to say that there are no freshwater fish which are harder than any saltwater fish. The most difficult freshwater fish like wild caught discus are harder than many of the basic easy common Fish from saltwater.
This is a really good way to put it regarding the difficulty ceiling and floor.
 

mort

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Tbh I don't think it's a bad myth to maintain. When I ran a lfs I had really new keepers that struggled with the basics of keeping fw fish so to add the extra element of a salt water environment would just have baffled them to much. I do know people that skipped fw and moved straight to sw but fw is a really good badge of honour that tends to make for a better sw hobbyist when the time comes.

As for is it harder, that's a open question based on what you are keeping. Like others have mentioned some fish are far easier than others and you could get a similar result from both types of environment but there are definitely fw that are very hard to maintain (like chocolate gouramis) because of their very specific water chemistry requirements. Some of these acid lovers make keeping a full blown reef look a doddle.
 
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fishkeepinginasia

fishkeepinginasia

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More complex procedures involved? Maybe.

As for the inherent difficulty of the fish themselves, it depends. I think there’s would be plenty of FW fish more demanding in their FW parameters than say, a Damselfish or Captive Bred Clownfish would be in SW parameters.

I love SW a lot more than FW. FW just isn’t appealing to me.

Definitely more complex procedures. When I started this thread, I forgot about things like how not everyone keeps an RODI filter under their sink. I enjoy some FW species when they're in the right setup. I'm a huge fan of discus and Asian arowana, through I've never kept the later because I'm America. But now that I work in China, I've considered trying it. They're still expensive here, but I've seen a few mid-grade fish I'd consider afforable.
 

hart24601

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The large disparity in the USA at least, boils down to most areas here, not all but most, have high quality inexpensive water from the tap.

You can buy a python water changer for $100 or less that will last decades and change even 100% of the FW weekly if wanted and in most areas for a 100g tank it’s just a buck or two water cost. No buckets, no real mess once you get used to it. It’s the big difference. It’s easy to gloss over, but if a tank doesn’t look right, take 30 min and $2 and change 100g this weekend. Easy. Not so easy with salt.

Now overall I don’t think FW fish are treated as well as they should be probably due to low cost, but that’s another issue.

I don’t think using discus as FW example is a good one since they are often thought of as one of the most advanced fw fish and far from average
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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freshwater doesn’t require that above. Marine fish are 1000x harder than fw to keep alive long term due to disease risks and preps required

setting up a sw tank for fish to swim in is easy. bottle of fritz, pinch of food, wait ten days change water youre cycled but that’s easy, the crypto brook velvet isnt
 
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