Any one ever owns a saltwater tank? I always dream to own a marine aquarium since I was in my teens, especially with the outstanding assortment of beautiful saltwater fish we saw when we went scuba diving in Taiwan. In the 1980's, my eldest brother worked with a guy, who owned the fish shop near our house, to build three tanks in our house. The biggest tanks was about 8 feet wide, 5 feet deep, 5 feet deep. The smaller ones were about 5 feet wide. We went to the North Shore outside Keelung and fish for our pets during our summer vacation. It was a really fond memory.

Ever since he first watched "Finding Nemo", Ethan has been fancy on the ocean animals, like sea turtle, shark, and other reef animals. Tina and I decided to set up a saltwater tank as his birthday present. The first thing come to mind when setting up a salt water tank is to take it easy. People always gets impressed by the colorful fish when they see a tank, but when you try to put one together, it is completely different story. It is everything but just simply buy an tank and throw the fish, and whatever you want, in it. I realized how easily we would get blind sighted when they react to things. Just as what Hsu Tze-Mo, (徐志摩詩人） ,wrote: "You could see a world from a sand." Putting reef animals in the tank is like building a complete ecosystem. We are actually building an ecosystem. We calculated how about how much sand and rock we need to put in the tank. Sand and rocks are the best filter for the tanks. Setting them up correctly will save you lot of energy.

On top of filter, light, heaters, the only necessary additions to a good freshwater setup are special gravel (crushed coral), sea salt mix, and a hydrometer. We carefully measure how much sand, rock we would need, then started to add salt therer. Could you imagine that you need to run the water for about a month, before you put a fish in the tank, even all the PH value, salt level, nitride, etc have reached the standard? Now, ee finally got our two Nemo fish in our tank, with several colorful corals, the brains, the mushroom, etc.

Now, my 3 year-old Ethan and 2 year old Amelia are learning about how to feed the fish, and corals. They call the solutions "coral's nei-nei(milk)". They understand we need to feed the fish and coral every day. Ethan would come to remind me that the fish is not fed yet if I get home later than usually. Every Saturday morning, feeding coral becomes a ritual. We are feeding 6 types of solution in one morning. They would line up in front of the tank, dump 6 different solutions into the water. In the school word Ethan put together for the Thanksgiving, he made Nemo fish and Jennifer, our neon dottyback part of his thank you tree.

The next thing comes to mind is what other creater can co-survive with our little crown fish.Last time, our anemone was harrassed to die by the crown fish. It is another challenge.