Freshwater or saltwater tank?

[Mei Lin]

Just wanna hear from you guys as to which type of tank is the most fun/easy to keep

 

[Jesterrace]

Well Freshwater is the easiest and cheapest to keep (it's rather ridiculous to claim otherwise), but I would personally say that saltwater is more fun to keep in terms of color, diversity and just uniqueness. There is also a huge range of variance in difficulty in a saltwater tank. A 20 Long FOWLR with 3-4 fish isn't much more maintenance than say a 20-30 gallon well stocked Freshwater tank. A 125 gallon plus fully active reef loaded with corals, tangs, angelfish, etc. on the other hand is significantly more work and expense.

 

[tanker]

IMO, if you are only keeping fishes (no coral), then they are both about the same.
SW fish generally grow bigger, so less fish per tank. This really depends on what fishes you really want.

 

[OrionGirl]

Startup/maintenance costs tend to go like this, cheapest to most expensive, using a standard 55:
FW, non planted.
Marine, fish only
FW planted
Marine with live rock
Reef.

There are varying levels of tech that can be added to each to raise the cost, of course, and cost will vary with the size of the tank. FW planted and Marine with live rock may be swapped.

In terms of interest...well...depends on what you really like seeing. Getting to see animals reproduce is more difficult in marine setups, though possible. Plants in marine tend to be functional rather than pretty, but corals are prettier than most flowers. If you like seeing hitchhikers and microfauna, a reef with lots of live rock is great. If you want a glass box that you can control the contents, freshwater will be better.

I have both.

 

[Mei Lin]

I still can't decide so I guess I'm just gonna have both haha

 

[OrionGirl]

Just keep in mind that with both, bigger is easier. It's more stable, and that helps a lot.