I'm not judging anyone bro. I've been around for about 15 years and learned a thing or two about reef keeping and people around here. I was new once too. Luckily, this place wasn't around. I too would have picked all of this unnecessary crap and bought 5k worth of exotic corals and killed it before my tank even cycled. I actually paid someone to keep my reef for the first 10 years and he kept me in check. He spent 30min every other week and I never had one issue. $120/month and he brought the RODI. The day I let him go, I bought a couple of fish and ended up killing about 20 animals from velvet within 24 hours. A year later, i bought a bunch of crap that I saw people running around here and ended up with dinos, and it wiped out all my coral. We all learn from our mistakes. Had someone told me what i said earlier, I may have reasoned with my decisions to not need the bright and shiny toys. We all learn from our mistakes. Simple is the way... Skimmer and Kalk is all one needs. 5% water change every other week and set your skimmer so you only need to empty it when you do that water change. Buy enough CUC to where you only have to scrape your glass when you do that water change. It works for the majority of reef keepers. You won't here that around here though because they want you to buy stuff.
