thinking of getting into a marine setup. have been keeping FW for a while so i have a good colection of tanks witch will have to be sold to help pay for all the extra gear. the question is what size tank is going to be best? i have tanks from 100lt up to 1100lt .they say that bigger is easyer to look after, but how mutch dose it cost to set up the equipment on say a 375lt tank?

The bigger you go the more expensive the gear is, eg skimmer and lights.

Impossible question to answer really because it depends so much on what you want to keep (more so than the size of the tank, to a large degree). There are a number of threads here where local prices are discussed, in theory it's possible to set up a very basic fish only tank for $500-$1000 but most people generally aren't happy to stay fish only and if you start off this way with very cheap equipment you'll end up having to replace most of it so you can keep corals.

i would like to keep corals as well as fish. so would like to set this up the right way.

tank is 1500 x 500 x 500 sump can be up to 225lt

what size skimmer

type and size of lights

chiller? is it needed

power heads, how many

and what else do you need

i am still learning so be easy on me

. so would like to set this up the right way.

you can hunt around for bargains, good equiptment is still worth buying second hand but dont expect it to be dirt cheap because its got a few miles on it.

there are four main areas of expense

skimmer

good skimmer, dpends on wether you want a sump as to what type you can get, the deltecs are the best hangon back type skimmers. if you have a sump it allows for more skimmer choices

Lighting

depends on what corals you want to keep

flow

the more the better (generally)

stock

rock is the biggest expense, you can find second hand live rock or the occasional bargain on trademe (all the better)

then your nice fish and corals

any where between 3 and 6 thousand I reckon for 375 Litres.

(That would include a few coral and fish).

Brian ,Wasp runs 2 hang on skimmers one being Deltec the other one works exactly the same for less money.

i thought that wasp prefered the deltec to the aquac???

oh well either way i reccomend a sump.

True, but I also have an aquamedic, (not to be confused with the aqua C), the needlewheel one, which performs well.