unless you have kept fresh water fish for a while i would not even thing about it as the water quality is real tricky to handle.


Yep, a freshwater tank is to a marine tank as a Neo is to an Empeg.
One you just 'stock and go', the other requires a much bigger investment of time and effort to get the best results. Of course, the analogy doesn't just stop with the effort...a well kept marine tank is a captivating blaze of colour and action that (IMO) far surpasses that attainable with a freshwater tank.

My dad kept freshwater fish for about 20 years before switching to marine fish, and still had fun and games. A few years back he had a bizarre experience with his marine tank.
After a successful few years of operation, fish started randomly dying and sometimes disappearing. He spent 6 months basically restocking the tank with a new fish every 2-3 weeks, only to see it die or disappear a short while later. He triple-checked everything; water quality, temperature, circulation, aeration, filterage, etc, even going as far as replacing components even though they looked fine, all to no avail.

Then one day he saw it. A praying mantis, living in one of the rocks. It was still only little, but had been feeding quite happily on the fish. Needless to say, that rock was soon removed, and the fish stopped disappearing. It was fortunate that he found it while it was still small - an adult mantis would have had no problem smashing the 1/2 inch thick glass, and that would have been *really* expensive.

I'm not trying to put you off of the idea, but just trying to make sure your eyes are open...go to your local library and check out a couple of books on the subject. It may be an idea to also check out a book dealing with freshwater fish as well - it'll give you an idea of the similarities and differences.