My 3 fish seem very happy and healthy. Not the prettiest tank on here, but I am proud of it. The maintenance is pretty low, just as easy as a freshwater tank in my opinion. So for anyone new, you don't necessarily have to have a lot of high tech equipment to have a pretty salt water tank. I use wal-mart water, a cheap hydrometer, and started with a lot of base rock. Now you can barely tell what was base and live. By the way the red corals are fake pieces but the mushrooms are real. They are thriving under a regular double flourescent light fixture.