Nice to meet you, I'm one of the diy anything kinda fish keepers and can tell you with some fabrication skills and basic electrical knowledge you can go miles on the dollar keeping fish. I don't think any of my tanks look super shabby.
My diy corner matten 29 was about $150.
Tank at dollar per gallon sale: $30
Digital 150 watt
heater: $35
~200 gph submersible pump: $20
Sponge filter material (Amazon): $10
Trash can to cut corner from: $6
Silicone adhesive: $7
Scrap sections of cpvc and fittings: $10
Black
blasting sand(coal slag, medium-fine): $20
Diy Glass sliding lid: $10
Diy
led lighting: $10 *
Plant trimmings, from trash at friends, and my other tanks.
*I have a common pair of power supplies for all my tanks, the larger was $30, the smaller was $15 the lights for each tank cost about $3-5 and require a chunk of roof
flashing to mount on that cost less than $1 per foot. This makes my lighting hard to put a value on. That said, I occasionally use a
nicrew classic plus in the 30" size on 20l or 29 tanks and I believe it can be had for less than $30.
In that tanks thread you can see it's progression, it started sparse and now it's a full on jungle. Big money can be spent on mature plants to look good now, or with patience you can grow it in, trim, replant and propagate a few plants into a jungle for very cheap.
If this is your first tank, I recommend starting with a few plants, learning to grow, trim and propagate them so as you build on your collection (
multiple tank syndrome) or upgrade/upscale (monster fish syndrome), you can continue using the skills you gained from your first tank vs spending hundreds on fresh plants each time. The throw money folks are usually the heart broken few if everything dies back in a fresh build, the growers just shrug it off and get better next month.
That said, my example tank is probably near as cheap as you can go on a full custom looking tank. My 3D 29 came in closer to $200, and my more bare, but smaller tanks in the 100-125 range.
If you are looking to get "real nice" some of the light fixtures out there are in the $200-$300 range alone, some of the
rimless tanks of comparable size are $200+ for just the tank before lids etc. You can almost justify spending a couple hundred on a
canister filter starting at 30 gallon tanks and larger, and the super popular name heaters are going to clear $100 quickly. If you throw money at buying mature plants, a 29 worth would be $100-150, more if nicer or rare plants are included. If rare plants are a target, a good off the shelf
co2 system is going to run $200 with monthly (maybe every other month) refill costs. Fancy aquarium
sand can run 100+ for this tank size, so could plantable active substrate. If you use co2 and active substrate you will need significant monthly investments into fertilizer and a rough guess (I don't use any of these 3 things) would be 25-50 every month or two on those supplies alone.
This "nice option" ends up running $1000+ for set up and the maintenance cost are not insignificant. To be fair, I do use diy water hardeners and my maintenance cost on just over 200 gallons of tanks is about $3 if I break it down monthly. If I was dechlorinating it would be another $2. The
fish food goes on the grocery bill just like the dog food so I can't give input on that, my wife says it's insignificant so I would bet less than $10 average monthly.
Last point on cost, have you found a suitable stand? Lumber has gone up significantly in my area, a stand I spent $40 building last year comes out to almost $100 today, making the store bought options look more attractive than they once did.
Edit: here's the link to my budget style 29 matten build:
29 all in one matten style corner with diy cave | Freshwater Aquarium Builds Forum | 457512
If you get to the last post you can see what it really turned out to be. Hard to believe it's the same tank.
