RDF,
I was told many moons ago that keeping salt water fish was much more maintenance than fresh water fish. Is this true? I love the color of salt water fish. Just something I'm thinking about down the line if my 34 year old Tinfoil barb ever dies. 
Mike
Alot of factors play into this tail......If you have a small tank, then yes, if a big one (bigger than 55g) than yes, but only at the startup phase. Here's why:
Small tanks have too much fluxation in their chemicals, which can cause the tank to become unstable, real quick. Larger tanks though can handle a little spike in one level and manage to smooth it out before anything noticable would happen. Think of the ocean and Katrina. Millions of gallons of water dumped back into the gulf after the storm. 90% of this water was polluted in some way, but the ocean is big enough to take it in and flush out the bad before anything could really go wrong.
In any tank setup the startup is always the hardest, only because your tank needs to be making bacteria in order for the tank to survive. Some will say you need every widget and gadget out there to make a tank work, but this is untrue. A simple wet/dry filter, skimmer and uv light with a pump or two and you're golden. That's what my 55g use to run on and it ran solid for 6 years. You'll go through a 4-6 month period of checking levels twice a week and the only real fish you can have in there are damsels because they are so hardy. After that, your tank would be in 'maintenance' mode where you would only change the water (20%) once a month.
Check out my setup for making water:
http://www.robertfahey.com/gallery/v/FishTank/It's in a sub folder called water storage unit. Based on where you live, your water could be good to use or not. In general, most people don't use tap water, but if that's all there is, then most don't have a choice. I use an RO system because I live in FL where the sulfur (sp?) has a real presence in the water.
As with anything, keeping yourself educated on the subject is the best. For instance, if you use tap water then there's a 99% chance you'll never be able to house inverts (crabs, snails, etc.) because they have 0 tollerance to copper, which is found in all tap water. I have a rain soft system at my house and there's still copper in my water after it goes through the rain soft machine. So if one buys crabs, snails and they all die the next day, it can get pretty frustrating pretty quick. And as in freshwater, saltwater fish are only compatible with certain fish. I've seen small fish kill other fish 10x their size! It's just nature though.
Hope that gives you some insight on SW tanks. If I can do it, anyone can. Just keep yourself educated and things go much smoother.
