Reef aquarium or fish only, a brief explanation.

Fish only marine aquarium-or-with out photosynthetic life

This type of marine aquarium is relatively simple because it is based mostly on a natural process revolving around what’s called the nitrogen cycle.
Lighting for all marine aquariums should be leds firstly and for fish only, no less then 90watts of lighting per 2 foot of the aquariums length.
For fish and mobile inverts that are not photosynthetic, the biological functions mostly directed at the nitrogen cycle require a lot of surface area on and in anything with in your waters where there can be protists, aerobes and anaerobes.
*Aerobes, which are oxygen dependant microbes, they take waste, dead life and left over foods by firstly using fermentation onto the processes called oxidation to what is called nitrate.
*Then you need anoxic/anaerobic areas that house microbes called anaerobes that rely on low oxygen areas to exist, such as inside dead coral and a little ways into a substrate consisting of gravel-shell grit-coral rubble and they use the nitrates oxygen molecules and leave only nitrogen gas molecules.
*If you do not want unsightly algae and red cyano in this aquarium, you will need phosphate reduction methods.
*A return pump from the sump that achieves around 5 times the total water volume per hour and a wave maker or wave makers that turn over the tanks waters no less then 10 times per hour.
*These put in place nicely with regular fresh salt water or made up salt water with RO with pure salt or reef salt as a water change each second week of 20 to 60 percent of the entire water volume, this is all you need for none photosynthetic life to live reasonably well!

Reef aquarium-photosynthetic life.

During the processes with in the nitrogen cycles oxidation parts, there are left overs labelled inorganic.
The first is nitrate that in very low levels is not an issue and if you have good bio internal surface areas in place like in live or preferable base rock which is dead coral, then it will never be much an issue.
If nitrate still is an issue the easiest way to remove nitrates is a purchased products called bio pellets or nitra guard titanium.
The rest that are the main issues for photosynthetic life forms are the components of what’s called phosphate!
These show up some times as organic, but are normally inorganic and they are phosphorus and orthophosphate and they exist due to the microbes oxidation processes.
Some of anything organic, a skimmer will usually work to remove these, anything inorganic, they cannot remove!
Now you can use plant life-caulerpa algae in your sump, they will absorb and this is called importing, of all that is inorganic and then you trim the algae with scissors and throw away those trimmings, that is called exporting.
There are purchased items to take care of phosphate like the many GFH products,also kents phosphate sponge or with a lot of care a pool product called starver.
Any resistance lighting which is T5s,T8s,metal halides and any other bulbs or fluoro tubes as well, wear out due to the heat they endure and are of not much use for photosynthetic life after 3 to 6 months.
Lighting for all marine aquariums should be leds and for reef aquariums, no less then 120watts of lighting per 2 foot of the aquariums length.
LEDs-light emitting diodes, are cheap and if fan cooled will last up to 10 years of great lighting for all photosynthetic life.
Photosynthetic life for reef aquariums means, they need intense lighting with maximum colours with in that lighting and need near no phosphates or any other nutrients or toxins that some corals, nudibranchs etc and live rock will expel for the first 2 months to 1 year of adapting to life in your reef aquarium.
A return pump from the sump should achieve around 5 times the total water volume per hour returning to the reef tank and a wave maker or wave makers that turn over the tanks waters no less then 15 to 25 times per hour.

All marine aquariums!

The last major needs for both types are to break your waters surface tension, the ocean does it by waves, chop and currents, a chiller in summer and a heater in winter and both should be over sized for your needs, they are the main points for the hobby to become very easy!