The avg cost of running a sw tank

Hey, my friend has $1000 of lighting alone for a 120 gal tank! Plus lots of sand and live rock costs a bunch. At least $200 for a protein skimmer. At least 4-5 power heads for circulation, and 20% water changes of RO filtered water every two weeks! Start with a smaller tank, get used to maintaining water quality, then upgrade! That will save you a lot of money in fish that go to the big pond in the sky. The biggest factor is learning to care for water quality, the best part of a sw tank is the corals and inverts that require good water quality. Good luck!

Fluffer pretty much outlined what you are going to see as costs. Depending if you want corals or not the lighting can end up being the most expensive part of the tank.

Costs of running the tank after setup are minimal in my opinion. Mainly just water is the only difference in cost as opposed to running freshwater tanks. It's the startup period where you will have large sunk costs.

I disagree with starting with a smaller tank though to learn to maintain water quality. If you can afford to start with the 240 do it. It is by far much easier to maintain water quality in a 240 as opposed to say a 45. The more water the more you have to do something wrong to make a bad impact. This does not mean you still won’t have to test and be just as careful as with a smaller tank it just means you have a larger margin of error.

I just reciently started a 125 gal F O tank and to be honest I'm in for well over $2000.00 (mind you it's worth every penny!) only about 1/4 of that cost was for the tank and I just have the standard lighting that comes with a tank when you buy it,nothing fancy but I'm starting to look in to other lighting. The fish them selves can be pricey too as can certain types of live rock . You'll want to be doing regular water changes at least 20% twice a month, and that should not be done with tap water .I get mine from my LFS at $0.25 a gallon.The expence is worth it if you have the time to really learn about running a saltwater environment. But if the expence is not yours alone It may take some convincing of other parties to put out so much money.

Gosh don't I sound like a MOM!!!