I'll try not to list anything already mentioned.
1. Reuse dead coral skeletons in a calcium reactor.
2. Sell frags.
3. Buy frags rather than colonies.
4. Feed fish free dead clams and mussels from a local sea food store. (they throw out the dead ones daily if I don't ask for them)
5. Hire a knowledgeable person to look after your tank when you go on vacation. Paying them a few bucks is cheeper than coming home to a dead tank caused by an inexperienced cheaper/free person.
6. Use non pharmaceutical grade magnesium chloride ice melting salt.
7. Purchase your annually consumed products during boxing day sales (bulbs, test kits etc)
8. Use crushed coral substrate rather than ARM fine reactor media in a Calcium Reactor.
9. Do weekly water changes rather than weekly trace element supplementing.
10. Lugol's Solution Potassium Iodide can be purchased from a pharmacy for less than half of what the Kent product retails for.
11. Plumb your tank with lots of unions and flexible hot tub hose. That way if you need to change something later you don't have to destroy everything with a saw. I've filled 2-3 garbage cans with old ridged plumbing configurations that I couldn't use anymore.
12. Keep spare parts, backup pumps and empty salt buckets. The extra inventory is cheaper than a dead tank caused by equipment failure.
13. Purchase an all in one controller rather than many individual controllers and monitors. Set it up to alarm and send a text message if something goes wrong. Again, dead tanks are expensive.
14. Buy small juvenile fish and clams rather than more expensive, less adaptive large adults.
15. Keep it simple... I think that is a contradiction to everything I just said. Oops.
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