Come on Brad do you really think a hobbyist can "recover" money by selling frags? :razz: Whatever comes out of the tank goes in with added interest :lol:

Absolutely. I put very little into my tank these days. I've probably made $15 for every $5 I've added this year.

Couldn't have said that better .. I never could make money off the hobby .
It a addiction , and you can't make money off something your addicted to .

If I was a vendor then yes lights , dosers , all on nutrition for them corals.

As a hobby, I'd rather not walk away from my tank soaked

We all look forward to that :D

Raied everything that your using as examples you've never owned.
Just like your several comments on LED lights. Sure you can have an opinion but it really means nothing without actual experience. Get what you pay for? How bout Dont Knock It Till You Try It
And I love polls, just the biweekly Whats The Best Salt polls get rather boring.

To me this is a hobby and it is for the majority of us. Certain hobbies aren't cheap... in hobbies there are die hards, enthausist and the more mild crowd. We plan a lot of our lives around our tanks and fork out a good chunk of our income in hopes to succeed in this hobby. The majority aren't trying to make a buck on this, in the end we know we will forfeit our money to succumb to the joys of watching and sharing the growth of our reefs. In the end, it is the difference in the amount money it takes to get to a state where we are happy. This will differ from person to person, our enjoyment from this hobby not only comes from the success of our tanks but our pride in the choice of equipment we choose to run.


I agree, its possible to have a stunning system with cheaper barebones equipment as long as the person knows what they are doing and keeping up religiously with maintanence. There are so many circumstances to a successful tank, but we all have our own theoretical way of getting there. I don't think its fair to knock on the expensive equipment and call them hype because we all have the option of not buying them due to lots of community reviews.

Lemme ask you some questions:

1. Does a tank need bubble king to succeed or does skimmers like vertex/bubble magus works? I have seen tanks having success with vertex skimmer and also bubble magus skimmer.

2. Do you need expensive LEDs to have success? Do you need radion/mitra to grow/color up successfully? If I am not wrong, you use AI and are happy. Isn't that all it matters? You being happy with your tank and not listening to "you get what you pay for" and running after fixtures like radion/mitra?

3. Do you need vortech to have proper flow in the tank?

4. Do you need expensive lights with expensive reflector to get corals growing?

The points I put forth for LEDs are related to "cost" and that is an independent to owning one. Companies say you save money with LED, I prove you don't. I have never said anything related to growth/coloration which is what depends on true experience. I did talk about disco affect which is something non-debatable.

All I am saying is "you get what you pay for" is not true (to me) for having success in this hobby.

I think it depends. I expect that some brands will offer more value in some respects but not always.

I use IO because I have not found any value in paying for more expensive salt. I use bulk Ca/Alk/Mg additives, which I would have to buy anyhow to dose my tank with to compensate for losses thereof due to coral growth - so I have it onhand regardless - to match parameter for parameter those values you might expect in a more expensive salt. It's just that experience has taught me that I pay less for the additives I use to achieve that, than I would be paying extra for the more expensive salt. So I save money on salt and the tradeoff is I put a little extra effort in the form of testing a new bucket (which experience has also taught me that you should do regardless: just because a salt brand is more expensive does not mean that there aren't the occasional bad batches). In this case I find I defray my purchase price by investing a little bit of time.

Also in the case of LED's I did find that certain products may be overpriced. Knowing what I know now, I realize I could have built a DIY solution for far less than what I paid for the off-the-shelf solution I elected to go with. That said, I didn't really want to do a DIY solution at the time just because I had other projects to finish and I felt my time was worth more (I guess because I need more time to test my salt buckets :lol:)

But this:
I am a long time Tunze fan myself but lately I am finding that I am not getting more longevity out of the units. I still have original $20 Maxijets from 12 years ago and they run fine, but I've replaced probably 4 out of 5 Tunzes on my big tank in the last two years because of premature failure. To be honest I was starting to think that if another one goes soon I might just go with Jebao's or whatever they're called, if I pay $80 and get 1-2 years out of it, that's a far better cost proposition than paying $200-260(*) and getting 1-3 years out of it.

(*My wavebox is now also having issues, I'm not sure if it's in the connector or the pump, but to replace THAT particular pump (6100) is $260 whereas to replace a 6105 motor core is closer to $200. One of my 6105's died altogether last month so I chose to replace that one first.)

I still like Tunzes in the meantime because .. I just like what they offer. :lol:

This thread is bound to be an endless circle of you say potato I say potatoe. It already has that painful feel of endless repetition. Bottom line people that drive a ford will never drive a Mercedes and visa versa. The same goes for tank equipment. What a buzz kill am I.

Definitely. But a person who drives mercedes should never insist another person that he/she must buy Mercedes cause a ford is not safe and won't last and won't drive and blah blah blah....every one would love to be able to afford a mercedes but if one can't...its not the end of the world. Its a luxury and not a necessity to buy mercedes. A ford would still work right?