20L: FW or SW?

Personally speaking i would stick with fresh... In a 20G you arent going to be able to add too many fish in there...


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Sounds like you aren't really interested in SW, so I'd stick with FW. I personally have zero experience with SW but someday I'd like to try it. But I'd need to learn about keeping a SW tank before deciding.

Hope you find another job soon. Sucks to be laid off...

Sucks to hear about the job, but as far as setup goes, i guess stick with what you feel you would personally be more interested in...

But i have to say the pistol shrimp + gobie idea sounds pretty neat...


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I've seen some sick 20L salt tanks in my life. One in particular was absolutely stunning with corals and had pistols and a single clown with a host anenomae (spelling) in it.

I've had a 20G FOWLR and a 105G Reef with 40G sump. The 20G took constant fiddling to maintain parameters and I did lose a fish or two. The large tank almost ran itself once set up. Larger is definitely easier, but, quite a bit more expensive. You sound like you know what you're doing and could keep up with top offs, temperature swings and water changes in a small SW tank. If you can also afford the LR and extra equipment to make the SW and do water changes then I think it comes down to what you want. If you do SW you may want to think about drilling your 20G and making your old 10G a sump or even getting another 20G for a sump. This would give you more water volume, which would help with temperature, salinity etc and let you put heaters and any other equipment down below. If you do SW I would also get a refractometer to measure the salinity. IMHO a Hydrometer just isn't accurate enough.especially with a small tank.
Either way good luck with the tank and finding a new job.

SW gets more difficult as the tank size decreases - it's harder to hold the salinity and temperature constant, and the fish are not tolerant of the fluctuations. The ocean is BIG and very stable... Reef fish generally don't have to deal much with such fluctuations in their natural habitat and haven't adapted to it the way freshwater fish have.

If you're new to salt, I'd recommend making the small tank freshwater and doing something larger with salt. (SW also end up being expensive - might want to hold off on that for now anyway ...)