how much more expensive to keep marine than fresh?

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indie
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how much more expensive to keep marine than fresh?

Post by indie »

can anyone tell me how much more expensive it is to keep a marine puffer over a freshwater puffer?

i have the space for a marine puffer, but just worried about costs. the setup costs are fine, i have a nice amount of money to setup. But what are the running costs like in comparison?
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Post by Pufferpunk »

Once you get a decent skimmer, sump/fuge, powerheads, live rock, RODI filtration system, then all you need to add on a regular basis is salt.
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Post by Gomez »

Lights and if needed a chiller can boost your cost considerably!
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Post by puffergeek »

Marine tanks do cost a lot to set up. The skimmer, lights, and LR can add up fast... not to mention all the other goodies PP and gomez mentioned.

As far as ongoing costs:

IME, lamps for the lights are the biggest ongoing expense beside salt. With a basic FOWLR tank, the lights may not cost nearly as much, although with a good sized fuge it may still be an expense.

I also buy stuff regularly to add to the water (like alkalinity/ph buffers, calcium, iodine, strontium, etc.), especially for tanks with corals, be they hard or soft. A good buffer will be needed in any marine tank, and I'd recommend at least using calcium with a FOWLR. IME, these tend to be used up at about the same rate as I use up freshwater planted fertilizers and such.

If you are lucky to find a good price on salt at a LFS it can ease your wallet woes considerably. I consider $10 US per bag (the size that mixes to make 55 gallons of salt water) to be a good price.

A good online retailer can help alleviate some of these costs.
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Post by Pufferpunk »

Drs Foster & Smith sells buckets of salt for $35 w/o the extra heavy weight charges.
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Post by brian »

Plan and simple to do Salt the right way ur looking at 10x the setup cost over fresh. I'm not saying this too scare u away from the hobby but then again i wouldn't wanna tell u its the same price by any means. If u get atleast 1 pound of rock per gallon for lets say 125 gallon , around my city that would cost roughly $675 plus tax at a LFS. Thats just an example :)
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Post by mommyfox »

That's if you do live rock. You can do a fish-only system without the live rock, and that can make it easier on your pocket book, though the extra biological filtration live rock provides is certainly nice, especially as messy as puffers are.

A cheaper option is to fill the tank mostly with base rock - I think most people use Texas Holey Limestone. You can then add a few pieces of nice live rock, and given time the coralline and other algae will spread to the base rock. It takes a long time, but it's waaaaay cheaper. Limestone is $2 a pound at a pet store here in Texas, and fifteen cents a pound at landscape supply where you have to clean it yourself. So that's an idea.
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Post by brian »

If u don't do live rock be ready to do 4x the amount of water changes due to nitrates going thru the roof with puffers.
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Post by mommyfox »

Yeah, that's true, your other filtration and water changes will have to do overtime. Of course, understocking like mad will always help.

When in doubt, understock!
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Post by JustinPSmith »

I tried a saltwater set up a long time ago with no Live Rock and it was aweful! Would NOT recommend you go that way. As brian said, the nitrates were through the roof all the time and it got very expensive because of the weekly 25% water changes with full marine water! It seemed like nothing but trouble. Its cheaper in the long run to buy a lot of good Live Rock up front and do less water changes. Plus your water quality will be way better that way.
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Post by Pufferpunk »

I actually did 50% weekly w/o LR but I had 3 adult puffers in there.
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Post by JustinPSmith »

Wow, that must have gotten very expensive!
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Post by Myaj »

I don't think keeping a marine tank going is very expensive, as long as you don't keep corals.

If you just want a fish only tank, the salt really isn't that big of an expense. I thought it would be a lot more than it is, really. The initial purchase of the live rock is very pricey, and a good skimmer will run you over $100, but maintaining it isn't much at all, just the salt.

You start keeping corals though.. then you need perfect water, perfect lighting, this and that... not to mention the corals themselves are expensive!

Understocking is the best thing you can do... and a fuge helps, you can set up one of those with a clamp on light from the hardware store instead of big fancy lights.
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