There is this ideology that clams, acros, SPS are like the hardest thing in the world to grow and maintain. Well I want to ensure you that statement is a blanket statement. Yes, there are many species that are "hard", but many that aren't. I can tell you from my experience when I was in high school, I had a 75 gall tank and hardly any money. I bought a cheap hang on the back skimmer, Chinese leds, and freshwater tank HOB filters and dosed bi-ionic sporadically. Just keeping up with water changes, low bioload and prayer, I cant beleive I actually grew these so hard to grow acros, SPS and clams. Ok welll some did die, but I had a green slimer growing, porcillopora , birdsnest and some other acros, but alot of them lived and did fine. I had like a two inch maxima clam and it was doing pretty good and actually growing. Not only that, but I also had a powder blue tang that regularly ate algae and I did this on a highschool kids budget, knowledge and attitude and it worked out. So all in all I probably spent less than a thousand dollars on all the necessities for equipment and got good deals on live stock from the good people here on MASC. If I can do it, you can do it and if someone here reads this and is discouraged from starting acros or SPS, dont be. Certain species and specific ones are difficult, but with knowledge as your guide you can figure out what what SPS work with you and with the right attitude and passion I can pretty much guarantee you will have success. Just an FYI,certain SPS like birdnest and porcillopora, green slimer acros, and stags seem to be a good starting point. Also I really no idea why my clam lived, and as far as knowledge with it all I did was place it near a wedge of rocks where it attached got a crap load of chinese led light and pretty high flow. My parameters if I can remember were ok as in I really dont know what exactly they were, but I assume they were consistent somewhere near reef tropical water, but I rarely tested anything appropriately and did anything on a consistent basis.