The saltwater vs freshwater discussion centers around keeping a reef aquarium, not necessarily just a saltwater fish only systems. In my experience, keeping a reef system is the most difficult, requires the most time and patience, and is my personal favorite. To each his own, I love the aquarium hobby.

Hated the background out of the tank! Loved it in the tank!!! Lools great!!

Joey. Just do coral please! They are beautiful and not replicable by plastic. I promise you’ll fall in love with them it’s right down your alley

Saltwater pro tip: Use rodi/distilled water to clean off the salt residue on the front of your tank with a clean towel.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but a 500ish GPH canister filter on a 120g tank with 0 live rock and using well water doesn't seem like a great idea for long term. Either way, still curious how this turns out.

Every time I watch one of Joey's salt water videos I am less and less afraid to make the switch. Very encouraging.

I sat up my first saltwater aquarium a few months ago. What I’ve learned is you NEED an auto top off, bite the bullet and get at least an RO system, the cycling process is different compared to freshwater, corals and fish need dipped to remove parasites, and don’t impulse buy!!!!!

joey please keep away from the copper banded butterfly fish they are almost impossible to keep in aquariums and they tend to starve if they dont have any aiptasia in your tank and if you dont get any coral you're not goin to get any aiptasia so i would'nt recommend that

Of all the tanks to-date, I’m prob most interested with this project. Not BC I don’t massively appreciate the other projects but because of the animal selection specifically butterflies. They can be challenging to keep healthy...looking forward to it and the continued evolutions to the gallery as a whole.

the background looks great! and the floating rock is absolutely beautiful! lol

I actually really like the background I would maybe position the foreground rocks differently so it didn’t look so evenly measured out but I like it! I can’t afford salt tanks so I will live through you!

Get rid of the hydrometer and get a refractometer.

Its actually my wallet thats scared of saltwater not me

If you get a cooperbanded butterfly make sure it’s eating at the LFS first before you grab it. Other than that you should get a Pakistan butterflyfish because it’s not your typical yellow fish, it’s dark brown with a unique pattern. Also should get a yellow longnose butterfly fish because it doesn’t look like your typical butterfly due to its long beak.

Joey, that canister filter is common. I used those before getting an fx6. A common problem I had with that was the hose attaching to the in and out ports constantly slipping of even being pushed all the way on and tightened as much as I could. Keep a wet floor censor nearby just in case it starts draining your tank on the floor

You said in the last goldfish update, you're gonna get them back. It's been 3 years

Please do coral at some point. I’m really interested into getting into it.

That floating rock up top looks so good.

I actually thought the same thing about that background, but it does look great! Maybe 3 too many "rocks" on the substrate. Less is more

I can understand why people think the common salty tank is the "pile o' rocks" style, but the best salty tanks are the ones with rocks that are thoughtfully planned out for maximum filtration, and fish safety and comfortability. Maverick Tide, here on KZfaq has/had a beautiful 10 gal pico tank on his channel years ago.

Copperbanded butterflies are notorious for dying unexpectedly, there’s a lot of other butterflies with similar body shapes that have a lot higher success rates. Butterflies are super cool though, pearlscales are stunning and longnose butterflies have so much personality.

I agree that background looked pretty bad outside the tank. Inside the tank and with it all setup I like it alot.

Joey, I’ve always loved how transparent and honest you are in vids. It’s very refreshing.

Love this simple salt water videos thank you.

I really enjoyed this i have nothing but freshwater an always thought saltwater was going to be so much extra work an a bit too expensive but this has me thinking about giving it a go thanks mr DIY

The 120’s look enormous at eye level! Wow!!!!

You definitely have the charisma that makes an everyday fish keeper feel more comfortable with the hobby. Love the content. 🙏

Copperband are hard to keep. They are very picky eaters. I know forsure if anyone can do it The King can. If you want to enjoy it more and "father" it less, consider different stocking. Can't wait to see what you do.

The butter fly fish you were looking at last a couple months in captivity max and 10 years in the wild but they are pretty

haven't done a water change on my reef tank in over a year. I just change my RO filters when I notice algae is starting to grow. I also slowly add salt solution when my salinity starts getting low, and necessary minerals like kalkwasser, etc . My skimmer keeps my water clean enough. My clean up crew and beneficial bacteria takes care of the rest with the help of NO3:PO4-X. Reef tank isn't hard. Just need more patience starting one. Most people run into trouble when they can't wait for the complete cycle to finish. The only thing you should throw in first into a saltwater tank is a skinned shrimp. Allow your ammonia levels to rise, and wait till the system can bring it down and keep it down.

Joey I've followed you for ages on the tropical side of fish and recently started salt water just before you so I love that your now doing salt also 😁 top work fella UK here

Love it. I think the tank looks GREAT!

A lot of people say those types of hydrometers are inaccurate for measuring salinity. I have used a refractometer for a while but now I have a glass hydrometer that you float in salt water and it reads salinity by how much it floats I find it's by far the easiest method to measure salinity 😋

Love butterfly fish!!! Pearlscales are great personally had one and loved it, the longnose is always cute, and dream one would be bluecheek.

Looks great! Love it! Thanks for doing this series, salt has always scared me but this doesn’t look too hard. Looking forward to seeing it stocked! Bring on the Angels!

Absolutely love the new background especially with that floating rock!

I want a copperband so bad but I hear so many horror stories about them dying within a few months no matter how good the aquarium is established. Would love you to prove this wrong to give me the confidence to buy one! 😊

Can you please get into corals, they make saltwater tanks way cooler

I love this. Thank you for showing us how to start a simple salt water. I'm going to watch your next videos before I attempt it.....but I'm going to try 👍👍

This background is awesome! This would make me think to move over to salt at some point!

10:27 every time he says absolutely, I expect him to say phenomenal 😂

Mandarin goby pretty please :) I think you may need live rock though! Royal gramma :) coral beauty is a stunning fish!

Thanks for keeping it simple, I haven’t got room for sumps and that sort of filtration, like that you are trying canister filters!

Great video joey, that tank looks amazing mate, can't wait to see it when you get the new additions

Copper bands are sooooo cool but their survival rate in captivity is extremely low... even for experienced hobbyists.. maybe look into something more likely to live? Love the videos!

I think there has been a misunderstanding. I think the difficulty level is more when corals are involved. If there is difficulty with keeping fish it’s more about the type of fish and how much or little the salt water community knows about it. Currently we know more about what is happening in space than in the depths of the oceans. In terms of keeping fish alive, it’s only more difficult because the salinity is another factor you have to take into account. I’m a fan of your gallery and I have learned about a ton of new fish through your gallery journey and would really like to see you explore more on the salt water side of things :) Love the fact that you love butterflyfish. My personal favorite is the long-nose butterfly maybe give it a thought since everyone else already has a copperband? Less is known about the eating habits of the long-nose so I just thought I’d put it out there.

I like that you tell new salty tAnkers to do what your budget says cause a lot of KZfaq always say buy this .. this is what you should buy to be successful....it really does sound like I could awesome thanks so much !!!! And thanks for being you 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

I love this background Joey it looks great. I've never kept tropical only had a marine tank from the get go. Neither one is that difficult as long as you are willing to put love and effort in. So happy that you are back in the marine world

I remember when you made a comment in the past that all of your freshwater tanks had become almost species-only tanks or with only a few species. I feel like you are falling into a similar pattern here doing only butterflies and with the tang gang in the other tank. Maybe one or two butterflies, but why do all butterflies? You could get more variety and expose people to more species if you did something like a butterfly or two, maybe some clowns, a flame hawk fish, or something like that

I'm not a huge fan of the hollow background/rocks over dry rock/live rock. It looks kinda cool, but the hollow background/hollow rocks seems like a perfect storm to catch algae and waste, and doesn't give the same benefit as reef rock a far as biological filtration. That aside, as far as fish go, coral beauty angels and flame angels are beautiful beginner fish. I'm also a big fan of copper banded butterflies and thread fin butterflies

The look of the tank is very nice joey ....that backround does look better then i thought it would as well

Hi joey im from the uk and love seeing your aquariums, and loving your new gallery so far. I think Harelquin Wrasse will look brilliant in that new set up.

Hey joey!! I’m just wondering if you could do a step by step process for saltwater water change ? Thinking of starting a saltwater tank for predators and want to learn as much as possible before I start one up and then potentially kill all my fish accidentally. Thanks Joey love your videos ♥️ keep it up 🔥

I honestly prefer my freshwater hobby over the salt. 40g salt, but I have 200g of freshwater overall.

Did anyone else think for the first 5 minutes after the aquarium was up and running that there were two fish swimming around the tank? Turns out it was just light reflecting off the glass from the camera! 😂😂😂

Love it😍 Awesome video as always

The original salt water tanks had no filtration. Just flow, macro algae and clean up crew. Also. Fresh vs Salt. It's all in what you like and what you can afford. I'm in winnipeg. Salt water stuff isn't cheap here.

I doubt you’ll see this but if you do... You should do a self sustaining tank. One where all you have to do is water changes and feed them. Keep it up for at least a year just to show everyone it can be done.

That is a beautiful tank. love the background.

Good video Joey, very informative for beginners, I've had salt yrs ago, but now stick to fresh. Love shopping with Joey.... Thanks. 👍

FLAME ANGEL!!

I've got a 300 gallon salt tank with 6 different butterfly fish , 2 Raccoons, 3 Yellow longnose, 2 Atlantic longnose , 1 Pearscale , 3 schooling banners and a big Copperband They live together with some blue green and red mandarins, few cleaning shrimp's , hermit crabs and sea stars

Im not even 10 sec in and you already made me smile! Thank for sharing your good energy with us!

So cool you are doing it this way as I’ll be learning on this tank thank you so much.

You will have to keep it up and running and successful for at leaat 2-3 years to prove it works.

That background tho. Looks so much better in the tank with water. If only the blue back transitioned darker in the center.

I’ve been running a budget saltwater tank for over 10yrs with no issues. Regular canister filter no sump or anything.

Hell Yeah another king of diy upload i allways look forward to the uploads so entertaining love your work no matter what

Always use a sump if you have the room. You can do it as cheap as a canister filter

the corals bug me. it looks liike they just put this together just to tap into salt water. compare there freshwater background to this. it just looks like they put more effort into the freshwater. jmo but im not saying looks bad.

Background looks great!!!

I love all your tank scapes! This one looks amazing!

Anybody else want to see an anemone, coral reef and clownfish aquarium?

Maybe someone has said this already not sure. Corals & Anemones are hard saltwater fish easy. I'm a saltwater noob haven't had any problems with my fish... Corals & anemones are a total different story. Show me an easy way to keep coral and anemones and you will be my king lol. Hell would LOVE diy stuff for saltwater. have $1,000 in a 20 gal! figured better equipment would make it easier i was wrong.

Almost every video makes me chuckle while also teaches me stuff. I don't have any fish but still watch almost every video that last 2 years :)

So many comments. Just want to say I'm really concerned about doing saltwater tank. So I'm really happy you're doing all these saltwater setups. As you go along it will allow me to learn...

Please don’t get a copper banded butterfly. They have such a poor survival rate and generally die quickly. It’s cruel to take these ones from the ocean!

Joey don't make the mistake most hobbyist do and be overconfident in your keeping. Copperbands are very delicate fish which need a REAL REEFTANK for their long term survival. Plus the tank has to be atleast 2 years old better 3, for them to pick on stones and get the small crustations they need. Such sterile tanks like you have will offer nothing for them.

Looking forward to this setup 😀

Love this new tank! Getting my first saltwater tank in 3 months 😀 I love the Roaops butterfly fish 🐠

If I had that background you can bet your ass all my fish would find a way to get behind it.

Hi Joey. Have you made an update video with this setup for saltwater aquarium? Like with no protein skimmer, no rodi water system, no sump and other regular expensive equipment for saltwater aquarium. Please share the link if you made already an update video. Thanks 👍

I love ur videos! And how u explain things for people to understand! This makes me want to do a salt water tank!

I am super excited to see this tank setup. I've been wanting to try saltwater but was worried about using a canister filter for it as everyone online says it's a bad idea. It's nice to see how you are doing this setup so that people like me who want to try saltwater have some ideas to go off of.

I wasn't a fan of the artificial insert until the water was in the tank. It looks WAY better than I expected.

ANOTHER saltwater aquarium he will take it down within the month watch

Looks lush and so realist 😍

Joey you show us what we can do with basic - medium fish keeping level, can you do a full blown max hard level tank scape with the difficult fishies.

LMFAO! The ego remark " it's already big! " I like a person who clowns on themselves.

I’ve heard that copperbands are extremely hard to take care of. Also I would like to see a raccoon butterfly

Joey needs a Cow Fish for one of his saltwater tanks. They have so much personality!

Beautiful tank set up can't wait to see the fish swimming around in it.

Copper banded butterflies are kinda neat

I though I let you know that butterfly fish are hard to keep especially for beginners and the copper band is one of the hardest they don't do well in captivity and it's hard to get them to eat but on saying that if you can get them to eat you have got over a big hurdle with them if you can do that them you should be fine heads up try clams on half shell with that butterfly and all others as well good luck with it

Looks good. I like the simple looks that you do.

thank you Joey. I'm nervous about salt and I appreciate the lesson

This is my favorite channel on KZfaq to watch! Has definitely inspired me to get back into fish keeping again. Keep up the good work

Do a live coral tank

I really like this tank Joey, like 10/10. That blue background and the top piece u put in really does the trick

You are working hard, lots of encouragement and strength to keep going.