An Ocean In Your Living Room

If you went back 60 years ago, it would've been virtually impossible to keep saltwater fish in your own home.

Saltwater fish keeping, in reality, in the hobby, has only been in existence for about 40 to 50 years maximum, and even then, it was an incredibly difficult and challenging section of the hobby to get into.

Most people who used to keep fr-- saltwater never really had that much success with it.

The reason why is the vast majority of fish that you see within the saltwater hobby are wild-caught fish.

Yes, they aren't bred in fish farms or they aren't bred in the home aquarium compared to tropical freshwater fish.

But in today's life, it is a lot easier to look after saltwater fish and it's a lot easier to set up a saltwater aquarium, and it is incredibly even possible for the first time fish keeper.

Would I recommend, however, to keep a saltwater aquarium if you've never kept fish before? Probably not, unless you are accepting of paying a lot more money, having a lot more mistakes going potentially wrong, and potentially being put off fish keeping for life.

And we don't want to do this for the first time fish keeper in mind.

So, saltwater fish.

As you've guessed it, they come from oceans around the world.

Primarily, we are gonna be discussing tropical saltwater fish.

So the likes of fish that comes from tropical oceans, from the Caribbean, to the Red Sea, to Southeast Asia, to Australia.

I'm sure a lot of people in today's episode listening along would've done some snorkeling or scuba diving, or perhaps they've only seen the film Finding Nemo and they've always wanted to keep clownfish and Dory fish such as the regal tang.

When I used to work in the hobby, especially towards the end of the noughties, I used to be asked this all the time, "I would like to keep Dory and I would like to keep a Nemo." Nine out of 10 times, it wouldn't happen.

So the people would come in expecting to just pick up a, an aquarium and keep those two fish, and it's not so straightforward.

So, for example, the common clownfish, which we'll discuss as part of my five favorite fish and best buy fish to keep getting into the hobby, are really straightforward to look after.

Dory, the regal tang, are one of the most difficult fish to look after and require incredibly large aquariums and a lot of work to go in, even though they are relatively quite easy to look after in the sense that they are relatively easy to find, easy in terms of affordability, but they do come with caveats that they need larger aquariums.

So, I've always been primarily drawn to tropical fish keeping.

And w- what I've noticed in this hobby is you either camp tropical freshwater or you camp tropical saltwater.

It's quite rare today that you find someone who does both.

It's a bit like a footballer being right-footed and left-footed, or you can write with your right hand and write with your left hand at the same time, because they, they all require a different style of fish keeping.

So, saltwater.

It is a lot harder to look after in the sense that you can't just go out to the fish shop now, pick up an aquarium and set up a saltwater aquarium and then put fish in it.

I mean, it, it's a lot harder than that for the main reason that it's not water coming out of your tap.

You need to get saltwater.