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From: reid@decwrl.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.aquaria
Subject: how much work is a marine tank?
Message-ID: <164@bacchus.DEC.COM>
Date: Wed, 2-Dec-87 02:38:44 EST
Article-I.D.: bacchus.164
Posted: Wed Dec  2 02:38:44 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Dec-87 18:39:59 EST
Reply-To: reid@decwrl.UUCP (Brian Reid)
Distribution: alt
Organization: DEC Western Research
Lines: 40

I am the happy owner of a 50-gallon freshwater aquarium, in which I keep a
random mixture of happy and healthy fish. I am a tremendous believer in
overkill technology to save labor, so my little 50-gallon tank has all manner
of outboard filtering, precision temperature controllers, automatic feeders,
timers to control lights and bubbles, and so forth.

I spend about 1\-2 hours a week working on the aquarium, primarily in changing
the water, cleaning algae off the glass, pruning the live plants, and so
forth. 1\-2 hours a week is not very much work, and if I miss one Saturday's
partial water change, the fish will not notice the difference if I wait until
the following Saturday, or even the week after that. The fish are robust, the
tank is large, and the filtration/purification systems keep the water
relatively clean.

I would really love to start a tropical marine aquarium, but I'm afraid that
I might not be able to devote time to it as regularly as the saltwater fish
need. I've read about 10 books about marine aquariums (don't you hate the
word "aquaria?") and although they all spend a lot of time talking about what
you have to do and how careful you have to be, none of them really gets down
to the nitty gritty. 

So, I have these questions:

  1) How many hours a week will I need to devote to the maintenance of a
     100-gallon tropical marine aquarium if I stay away from the more frail
     species? I'm willing to put a lot of time into getting it set up, but
     I'm afraid that in the steady state it will need more time than I
     will be able to give it. 2 hours a week I can handle. 5 hours a week
     I can't.

  2) How long can it go without attention? I travel a lot, and my wife isn't
     particularly excited about tending to my fish. Could a tropical marine
     aquarium be set up with automatic gizmos so that it could go a week
     without my attention? I'm willing to do a lot of custom engineering,
     building controllers, and that kind of thing, but if there is some
     measurement that needs to be made and there isn't a sensor for it, then
     there's no way to make an automated system.

Brian Reid
DEC Western Research