5 more votes I believe :mrgreen:

6... Chowder and Tom R's votes don't count.. lol We got 12 people.

Just noticed that. My bad

Course, now it appears people are getting greedy... adding 50% of initial budget - thats ridiculous.

It's one thing to adjust for inflation, it's another thing to add 50% to the budget mid stream. To me it would seem that adding 20% would be fair/equitable, just increasing for the sake of those who can't stick within the budget; that doesn't work.

I know some of you won't agree with me on this, but since this is a Canreef contest, it would be interesting to hear some feedback from Canreef members who will ultimately be the judges in this contest.

Anyone can post there opinions, the "contenders only" was referring to pole so it doesn't get too cluttered. So Canreef members post opinions but please don't vote.

However don't over think this, only two people have voted to keep the budget as is and as far as I know those two people aren't in the contest. So far everyone has voted for some kind of increase.

Heh, I've been watching this with interest. As a non-contest member, I just wanted to say that I was really interested to see what people could do with a 5 or 10 gallon tank and $300. IMO anyone can do anything with scads of money, only the creative can, well, "get creative" with a small amount.

Just my two cents.

Carry on :razz:

Oh and I edited the poll to reflect only contest members :biggrin:

Well the way I see it the challenge is relating more to what can be done with a stock 10 gallon tank the budget just keeps everyone on the same playing field. I understand the interest in seeing what can be done with $300 but to be honest as it stands the set pricing isn't even close to being accurate anyway. For example $20 for large LPS or 15" SPS, that's not even close. Plus livestock prices vary so much and some get better deals than others. With my tank I haven't spend a dime on livestock but I'm still counting so called "fair market value" which again to be perfectly honest isn't even close. I figure we might as well let contenders have a little more freedom and stock their tanks how they choice, the budget will still exist but at least we'll see a little more variation.

To be honest I think the contest would have been better to just have a budget on equipment and not livestock, maybe next time :biggrin:

I agree on
Quote "For example $20 for large LPS or 15" SPS, that's not even close"

This is why I don't think the large budget increase is necessary.

On this I'll choose to disagree; I think the whole system is a better competition, it allows some of us to go higher tech and make it up on the livestock or go cheap on the hardware and spend it all on livestock.

However, I don't think we should be talking 100$+ increases. I'm adjusting my budget on livestock due to increased costs in the past month on livestock; most of the LFS/LPS stock prices have risen in the 20-25% range. As this has happened between planning & contest start, I'd say we should allow for that. 50$ on the 5.5's and 60$ on the 10's to compensate for inflation sounds reasonable to me, to be hitting 100-150$ that's nuts...