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[Redbeard]

Your cost is going to depend on how much you DIY, and what kind of system you want. I read somewhere that you could get started for anywhere from $20 to $50 per gallon. Since you just ask for an idea as to how much money it would cost to get started I thought you might find this interesting (or not).

About a year ago we had a 50 gallon tank sitting empty that a pair of red eared sliders had outgrown (a lot faster than we anticipated), we've had FW fish and plants for about 15 years so I thought it was time to try my hand at a mini reef.

Remember everybody's system is going to be different, this is what I came up with after reading a few books, some back issues of AFM and countless hours surfing the Internet and visiting the Birch and Monterey Bay aquariums (don't forget the LFS).

This is what I've spent so far:
Books- $200
Lights- $620 (2 Metal Halide Pendant fixtures with 175 watt 10000K bulbs)
Chiller- $639 (You might not need one, we live in the desert)
Live Rock - $305 ( 90 lbs.)
Tank cleaners- $100 (snails, crabs, shrimp)
Aqua Clear Pro Series 150 Wet/Dry - $300 (Bio-media removed) it has the protein skimmer built-in
2 Mag 7's - $70? +/- each
SCWD Wavemaker- 40$
Grounding probe- $15
Digital thermometer- $20
Enough sand to cover the bottom in the front- $23 (A refugium with a DSB coming soon)
Other stuff- $???

I don't think I left out any of the major components. Anyway that might give you an idea of what you'd be getting into money wise. If you go fish only you won't need the metal halides and if you live in a milder climate than we do you might not even need the chiller, but you're still going to want some kind of auto top-up and you'll want some kind of dosing system if you go with a mini reef, you can spend some more money on that. Right now my top up system consists of a 5 gallon glass carboy, some airline tubing and a mini gravel vac, I'll try using it to dose kalkwasser when I run out of B-ionic (hope it works). You might want to invest in a RO/DI filter if you don't already have one.

Then there's all the other stuff, testers, test kits, algae scrapper, rubber gloves, bucket, mixing vat, quarantine tank, and oh yeah salt (the mind boggles).

I'm getting real close to that $50 per gallon mark and everything looks great and is working nicely. I could easily upgrade to a 120 gallon tank without spending too much more money. A good DIYer could do it all a lot cheaper.

Ted