That stuff is too expensive for me I have a little 10g tank that I was going to set up as a nano reef. I was trying to find some live rock on craigslist because I don't want to spend 7-8 dollars a pound at an LFS.

Yep, I'm a cheapass You can see that the tank isn't even sitting on a stand that fits. There is about 8" of tank hanging off each side of that wooden stand! My light strips don't fit any kind of hood so their placed over the tank and I use the paper that the bulbs came in to cover over the front so the light doesn't leak out into the rest of my living room.

My lighting fixtures are Lowe's dual 48" strip fixtures (I have two on the planted tank) that I paid 9 bucks apiece for because I didn't want to spend 100-200 bucks on a Coralife setup (Hey, I'm making 4 wpg!). I inject Co2 by mixing sugar water and yeast into three 2liter bottles and running an airline into a powerhead because I didn't want to spend 300 bucks on a pressurized setup.

My planted tank is super ghetto, but it can be done. I just can't seem to find a way to do a coral setup cheaply. I've heard of people using utility lights and wiring their own ballast into it and a few 70W metal halide bulbs. I might end up doing that because, well, I don't want to spend a lot