Saltwater aquarium fish are the most beautiful and colorful fish you can keep. They are also the most fragile and costly.
They can range from about ten dollars to hundreds of dollars and most are captured in the wild and shipped to your local pet store or to your home if you buy them over the internet.
If you are a beginner, you might want to start off with saltwater aquarium fish that are the hardiest. Those would be the damsels, saltwater acclimated mollies and clownfish.
Damsels are hardy and not too expensive but are also aggressive so you won’t want to put more than 2 in a tank. Mollies, a typical fresh water fish, can be acclimated to salt water (add saltwater to their bag a bit at a time over a period of 6 hours so they will gradually get used to the salt). The mollies are a good fish to use for your first as they are very inexpensive. The clownfish are quite hardy but difficult to get used to a new tank. Clownfish are territorial so you should only have 1 clown on your saltwater aquarium fish list.
After you have your tank running for several months, you’ll want to try the more expensive saltwater aquarium fish such as Tangs, Angels, Triggerfish and Lionfish.
The tangs are susceptible to marine ich, but are otherwise hardy and will help in your maintenance by eating the algae on the sides of the tank – make sure you have enough algae to feed them, or you can add in some leafy greens. I had a magnetic clip and would clip green leaf lettuce to the inside of my tank about ¾’s of the way up and watch the fish graze.
Lionfish and Triggerfish are aggressive and can be costly. They are carnivores and need plenty of shell fish. Make sure you feed them foods formulated for saltwater aquarium fish or they will not get the proper nutrition.
Angelfish are very delicate and require special foods. They can be quite costly so you will want to research exactly what and how to feed your fish before you purchase one.