Amusingly enough I have a very similar system to what the OP is describing. About 2000 g of total water lit with radions, chinese lights, and solartubes with 2 skimmers and vortechs. My average amperage over 24 hrs is 20.21 or roughly $210/mo in electric at $0.13 per month. I change 600g of water per month using a genesis system. So that's another $150 in salt. Water is probably 3000g per month with a 2:1 rejection rate on my backpack RODI system. I don't know water rates since I'm on a well. I automated everything I could think of so I could run it without a maintenance company so maintenance can be as little as magneting the glass (20 min per week), mixing 200g of salt water (20 min 3x/month), feeding, (5min/day), cleaning the skimmers (10min per week) and then general maintenance which is probably 3hrs per month. This does not include installing new corals/fish/equipment, only replacing what I have running. My system is about 1.5 years old so there is about $2-300/mo in equipment failure/replacement on average. Keep in mind the average piece of equipment is probably $600, so it's not every month, but I would guess that's about average. I feed about $40 per month in frozen. There's CA/Alk and RODI filters, which probably average about $50/mo.
So total cost, (I'm sure I'm forgetting something) is 210+150+250+40+50=$700 per month. This is without adding corals/fish. I can tell you I added about 50 corals on black Friday (mini colonies and frags) and the tank still looks empty, so corals/fish can be quite expensive to add and have a tank look stocked.
I would guess that I started with $30,000 or so to get it up and running and have probably added about that much in new equipment and stocking over the last 1.5 years. My guess would be that including the $700/mo to run it, future costs with adding livestock will average $1,000 per month and an average of about 8 hours per month in maintenance and 4 hours of adding stuff. My fish room is not clean, but the DT looks pretty good.
So total cost, (I'm sure I'm forgetting something) is 210+150+250+40+50=$700 per month. This is without adding corals/fish. I can tell you I added about 50 corals on black Friday (mini colonies and frags) and the tank still looks empty, so corals/fish can be quite expensive to add and have a tank look stocked.
I would guess that I started with $30,000 or so to get it up and running and have probably added about that much in new equipment and stocking over the last 1.5 years. My guess would be that including the $700/mo to run it, future costs with adding livestock will average $1,000 per month and an average of about 8 hours per month in maintenance and 4 hours of adding stuff. My fish room is not clean, but the DT looks pretty good.
