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hey, guys!

My brother in law is planning on getting a 180 gallon salt water tank, but my sister found out that the salt for the tank costs 1$ per gallon per month(if this were true it would cost 2160$ a year). Is this true? if not, what would the cost be to run a 180, long term?

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Jamie

Oscars rule!

That is pretty expensive! I just bought salt to treat 50 gallons for 17.29. It was on sale though, normally $27. I just bought it yesterday it is Instant Ocean brand, which I have heard is pretty good. I also bought a DI unit for cleaning the tap water. You can usually purchase the di water in most fish stores though, the place i bought all my stuff at sells it for i think .30 or .35 per gal. When those are added up it is close to 1.00 gal but that is assuming that it is a fish only tank, since you will need to add other things if you have a reef tank. They can get very expensive very quick, so I am starting to learn


[This message has been edited by aaroncain (edited 02-07-2002).]

well I dont think you really need to worry about the salt cost... if the tank is properly set up you will only have to do 10% water changes every month and if the tank is set up top of the line you will almost never have to do water changes... the real cost will be setting it up... salt water tanks run about $30-40 a gallon to set up as a general rule of thumb, which makes the simple set up for that tank $5,400-7,200. I set up a 90 gallon reef tank that cost me roughly $3,000 to set up so I know how expensive they can be. The salt is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the total cost of the tank. I bought enough salt at the begining to make 500 gallons of salt water and still have about 300 gallons worth left, so you shouldnt let that rule out the tank, however the total cost might make it prohibitive. My advice would be that if you dont have enough to set up the tank right you shouldnt set it up at all because everything is expensive, fish, rock, coral, etc etc the worse the tank is set up the more likely those things will be to die and then you are out the money, and it can be very disappointing.

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Adam

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ok, thanks for the info