Hello from Calgary

[asylumdown]

Containing costs is always a good idea. Reef tanks run the gamut from proverbial bentleys to to pintos in terms of equipment and I've seen incredible displays at every price point, it all comes down to what you are willing to put in in sweat equity and what you're trying to accomplish in the end. Also, trying stuff out, making mistakes, seeing what works and what doesn't is all part of the process and why it's so freaking addicting.

The only words of advice I'd give to myself if I could meet me again when I was just starting out would be:

1. don't buy the cheapest version of everything. It's cheap for a reason. While you may think you're saving yourself $200 by buying the Coralife "overflow special" 220 super skimmer, you are in fact just making the skimmer that you will need to buy to replace it cost a couple hundred more than it needed to if you had just spent the money up front in the first place. You don't need to buy the 'best' of everything (or anything really), but it helps to not buy the 'worst' of things.

2. Future proof as best you can. You say you want a reef and you're buying a new tank to do it. I'm all for recycling equipment like a canister filter, but when you buy your new tank, at least account for the fact that one day you'll almost certainly want a sump at some point. If you buy a tank that has no overflow and you've got no ability to easily add an overflow, you might be kicking yourself in the future wishing you didn't have to have all that 'hang on back' crap messing up your view and potentially leaking/overflowing all over your floor. Even if your first sump is a cheap 15 gallon throw-away tank from big al's with a hack job DIY single baffle sitting under a 100 gallon tank so that you've got room for your canister filter, you'll at least have the plumbing necessary to upgrade to a more complex sump in the future if that's what you decide to do.

3. Try to get an idea of what it is that you want your tank to "be" before you start. Do you want a full blown SPS reef? Do you really love the crazy colours of expensive open brains, acans, and scolies? Do you like the low maintenance, big impact look of huge leathers and soft corals? Take a look at some photos of reef tanks online that make you go "wow" and dissect what specifically is in them that makes your heart go pitter patter. The ocean is a big place, with infinitely more niches and environments than you can replicate in a glass box, so it's very difficult for a tank that tries to be 'everything' to succeed. Different groups of corals have different requirements, and I would set up a softie/LPS dominated reef very differently than a high energy, Acropora dominated surge zone reef in terms of lighting, flow, and stock list, and nutrient & chemistry management system.

4. Pick a tank husbandry philosophy, research the crap out of it, and stick with it. At least for the first 6 months. There's as many ways to keep a tank as there are ways to cook a dinner, but there are biochemical realities you'll have to deal with no matter what, one way or another. You'll need a way to deal with nutrients (primarily nitrate and phosphate) that is appropriate for the system your'e trying to run, you'll need a way to deal with water chemistry, you'll need a way to deal with flow, with lighting, with water changes, with feeding. etc. etc. There's a bunch of 'out of the box' solutions to major issues like nutrients such as zeovit, biopellets, biopellets plus GFO, the berlin method, deep sand beds, liquid carbon dosing, water changes, refugiums, algae scrubbers, etc. and a dizzying number of variations on each of those. None is 'better' than the other, just 'more appropriate' for you, your lifestyle and what you're trying to achieve. What is universal, is the reality that if you don't consider the 'outputs' of the nutrient cycle or take them in to account in some fashion, unwanted and nuisance algae that will make you want to quit will deal with them for you.

and finally 5. Make water changes as easy as humanly possible. Reef tanks require more 'life real estate' than a fresh water tank because no matter what way you cut it, at some point, you'll need to do a water change. While there are people who subscribe to the 'no water change' philosophy, they are in the vast minority, and that philosophy, IMO, shouldn't be entertained by someone just starting out in salt water. Unlike fresh water systems, a salt water water change requires taking your source fresh water and mixing it up to the appropriate salinity. For some people, this means storing both copious amounts of pre-mixed salt water and copious amounts of pre-made RO/DI water, which requires considerable 'out of tank' real estate and infrastructure that you might not consider, while for others, it means simply a 20 gallon Brute garbage can they keep in a closet that gets briefly filled with tap water, mixed with salt, and hand balled in to the tank with buckets, all the day of the water change. I've had a tank where this process took 2 hours and would have destroyed my floors if they hadn't been concrete, and I currently have a tank where this process takes 20 minutes. The logistics of a water change are so fundamental to whether or not you stay in this hobby long term, I probably should have made this point #1. Put as much thought in to them as you put in to in tank flow dynamics.

Anyway that was long enough.

*sigh*. Welcome to the hobby?