As anyone know`s salt water fish can be a expensive hobby and the costs of setting up a system doesn`t just stop at a tank and stand. I didn`t bother to keep receipts but off the top of my head some of my costs were....
180 gal. Tank $700.00
Little Giant Pumps X 2 $400.00
Ice Cap Fans X 2 $160.00
Lights $1400.00
Live Rock $1000.00
Plumbing $200.00
Then there`s Power Heads, Water Filters, Protein Skimmers, Sand, Salt Water, U.V. Sterilizer, Filters etc etc etc.
As for the comment CanadaWest made about a tank and stand for $1200.00... I spent a great deal of time looking at stands (in Canada and the USA) some that were as much as $2500.00 US and found the quality to be very poor. I also wanted a stand that would be indentical on both sides as my plan was to use my tank etc. as a room divider someday. I also wanted a stand that would be open in the centre so I could keep my 10 gal. feeder tank in it. Not being able to find anything to my satisfaction I decided to build my own. After close to $900.00 in materials and almost 3 months of work in my spare time I finally had the stand I wanted.
I created a homepage (my first one) with some pics of my tank etc. if anyone is interested. Hope it works.
http://hometown.aol.com/rainman091827/index.html
AL