Consider all following factors:
1. Electric bill (watts used, not service charges) is a minor nuisance, comparing to:
- cost of salt for water changes (and cost of its delivery),
- cost of specialized food,
- regular trips to LFS to buy it (or mail order),
- cost of continuous food dosing device.
2. Time. After starting culture of super-small rotifers for sea apples and crinoids, and trying to reproduce berghia nudibranches to fight aiptasia, which gorges on such amount of food, all my time is tied, a little was left for the tanks.
3. Interest. Sooner or later comes time, when one can no longer continue obtaining new specimens for collection, even if physical space in tank is still available.
I wasn't able to find opinions of others on the topic, but after finding next really interesting non-photosynthetic invertebrate, I'm facing the necessity to adapt tank to its needs: change aquascaping and pattern flow, what affects all previous inhabitants, so one has to find the balance and compromise for all organisms (until next purchase
). And not balanced situation may lead to increase of undesired organisms, like aiptasia, bristle worms, red slime, dinoflagesllates, flat worms.
Without feeding interest, all becomes a burden, not a hobby.
On the positive side, non-photosynthetic corals and fine filter feeders are very unusual, interesting and well worth of keeping (keeping in mind what was said above).
What I would suggest:
Mind, please, that I'm only 2.5 yrs in the hobby, low tech and budget end, my tanks looks unpresentable, but I'm keeping almost all available groups of non-photosyntheric corals and fine filter feeders - Christmas tree worms, LPS (sun coral and its cousins), soft corals (gorgonians, chili, scleronephthya, dendronephthya, filter feeding sea cucumbers, feather stars, and barely related, but amazing tube anemone). Sun coral reproduces regularly, other sun regrew tissue on skeleton, red finger gorgonian reproduced once, yellow morph and fine blue sea whip grow new branches (what is unusual), sclero opened from half-molten state, stopped necrosis of swiftia gorgonian, Christmas tree rock recovered from snow white bleaching during toxic tank crash, and worms actually grow.
1. Your tank setup is good, if the skimmer is much larger, then recommended for this size of tank and skims really well.
You may consider later adding UV and ozone, but this may affect larvae survival. You can see more information at this forum, thread FTS of the non-photosynthetic tank, and at Ultimate Reef (UK) Azoo forum, thread Primary means of filtration. At sponsors forum here should be Fauna Marin post, Gorgonian system.
2. Choose, what kinds of NPS are more interesting to you:
a) gorgonians, scleros, dendros, crinoids, cucumbers, which all require high flow and continuous dosing of food (automatic device will be required, peristaltic or syringe pump). I'm doing this manually so far, but this is not optimal and is a burden, after several months of initial splash interest.
b) sun corals and other dendrophyllids. Lower flow, and will require manual feeding twice a week or more, if you will want faster growth or recovery. With several large colonies use of mysis and Ocean Plankton from LFS will be necessary, the homemade seafood blend in required quantity pollutes water too much. This tanks will be less in variety, then the tank (a), but with tolerable water quality they are reliable and very bright in the tank, visual impact is impressive.
c) high light tank with Christmas tree worms is out of question, as I understand. Without them, you can keep long-nosed fish to fight aiptasia and bristle worms.
It's all. Take a look around at existing NPS tanks (most of them are big), see what other are using from hardware and food for particular group of organisms.
HTH. Good luck!
