What is the highest ONGOING cost to your reef tank?

[Cory]

For me its electricity. 3x 400 watt metal halides. 4x 80w ho t5s. I run almost 2000 watts for 12 hours a day. Also i use a pump that uses 300watts as my return pump. Also i use a 90w uv sterilizer and 165 watt red led for the refugium.

 

[Ef4life]

I don’t calculate electricity and water usage. But it honestly isn’t very much.

my biggest costs are foods and 2 part dosing. Brs bulk is extremely cheap, but adding in the tropic Marin trace elements really increased the cost by about $20 a month.

I figure for all 3 of my systems it’s probably $50 a month in cost. I try and budget $100 a month to support my addiction.

 

[burningmime]

Probably electricity, but salt for water changes is up there. Salt is crazy expensive these days and I don't think it will go down.

 

[Gtinnel]

I go through about 6 buckets of salt a year, but I use cheap reef crystals. So my maintenance cost of salt and trident reagents cost me about the same throughout the year and are tied for my highest continued expense.

 

[ZoWhat]

 

[N.Sreefer]

Electricity and water esp the power bill in the winter keeping 150 gal of water heated. Power where I'm at is expensive so I'm pushing 400-600 a month. Tbh I'm always terrified to open the mail when the end of the month rolls around.

 

[ca1ore]

Electricity is easily the highest ongoing cost on my system. It’s in the range of $250 per month. Food, additives, other consumables don’t come close.

 

[jgsolo32]

Everything

 

[DaveRaz]

Acropora Addiction

 

[Rubber Ducky]

My biggest ongoing expense is trying to not add more corals all the time...like I browse and want, browse and want/buy, browse and then a dang live sale happens and there's more corals on the way!!!

 

[HB AL]

Electricity/food

 

[Amatsuki]

When running all the lights the heater skimmer reactors return pump and everything else the electricity on the tank is pretty expensive for my tanks the electricity is more expensive than the rest of the house. Then you have the food replacing filters for rodi replenishing reagents for all of the tests and then you have the salt depending on which salt you have it can be pretty expensive I use the Red Sea coral pro salt which is 1 of the more expensive salts

 

[DJ Lone1]

Beautiful

 

[Sean Clark]

 

[NowGlazeIT]

Beautiful

Thank you kindly!

 

[DangerDave]

Foods, carbon, soda lime, salt, kalk, peroxide, electric, but not necessarily in that order.

 

[flashsmith]

All the bourbon and Scotch I drink while watching my tanks in the evening..

 

[sghera64]

Electricity: It drives pumps, lights, heaters, R/O pump and even my AC to remove all that heat.

However, I think my tank is a profit center as I get more money selling off excess coral growth than I pay in reefing bills.

I use a Kill-o-Watt plug and noticed that I use about 20% of the electricity with programmable LED lights as I did with my 250W MH's. I think switching to DC recirc pumps also cut down on my electricity consumption.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Main ones for me besides electric is chemi pure carbon, DI resin, salt, acropower and frozen food.

 

[CR_Smith]

Salt, 2 part/additives, food, RO/DI Filters, Testing reagents, sometimes new filter socks.

Not to sure which is the biggest ongoing cost. I just have 100$ a month going into a "reef" account and that about covers everything.