New estuarine tank

[DanTheSnail]

Hi folks,

I'm new to keeping aquaria at home. Wondering if anybody has set up an estuarine tank. I'll be keeping inverts: Nassa snails, ghost shrimp, Hemigrapsus (I'd love Pachygrapsus, but I think they'd eat everything else), maybe a Navanax or two. Jackknife clams, if I can figure out how to feed them. Just common local species I can nab with my sport fishing license.

I just set up the tank: 10 gal, gravel bottom, 1.023 SG. I'll seed it tomorrow with a scoop of mud from a local estuary and let it do its thing for a few weeks.

Any tips/advice/portents of doom?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

It’s kimda rare to find nowadays. Most opt for the easy stuff. Coral and fish.
I’d highly reccomend looking at books. The net doesn’t have a lot of info on it. Julian Sprung is the name that comes to mind first. Many types of tanks for many years.

The cautions are , you can’t mix oceans. Or rarely does it work. Tropical and temperate tanks. Hot and cold water animals.
In sand Diego it’s all cold water.
So most for a temperate tanks run a chiller. Typically you want 70 degrees max. And that’s pushing it.

Planted tanks also require a bit of different care. Where high No3 and Po4 are bad for sps and reef tanks , planted tanks can eat a lot of it , so you may want to look into planted or macro alge tanks.