Im going to say around 1000-1500
Youll need Sand, Live Rock, a protein skimmer, better lighting depending on if you want corals, test kits, salt mix, powerheads, heater and PATIENCE.
I agree 100%. Especially with the last thing: Patience. Only bad things happen fast in this hobby.
It is tough to assign a cost to a tank until we know a little about you and what you are looking to do. When you say reef, do you mean Live Rock, Fish and inverts? You can also mean that you are planning on doing just softies. Or maybe you are real gung-ho and will settle for nothing short of a SPS dominant tank.
The care level and affordability are very different at the different levels.
If you are planning on just Live Rock, Fish and Inverts, then a really good protein skimmer, Live Rock and Live Sand will be your biggest costs. I would say that the
AquaC Urchin Pro would be a good fit for a 60 gallon tank (I believe they sell a surface skimmer for this, Pasfur help me out...). For Rock and Sand, a lot of people on this site use
Marco Rocks. You should buy about 80% of your rock dry, and leave the last 20% to be Live Rock bought at your Local Fish Store (LFS). For lights you can probably go with a twin bulb Compact Fluorescent, like the
Coralife Aqualight. This should be enough to showcase a few Fish and Shrimp...
If you are going the Softies route, you will need to upgrade the lighting, probably to the
Nova Extreme T5. This would leave the spectrum open to introduce a few LPS and SPS if you got the itch... you will probably want to install a sump with a refugium and an
in-sump skimmer. This will also require you either drill the tank, or install a
hang-on overflow.
If you go SPS dominant (which I wouldn't suggest until you get a good amount of experience in saltwater care), then you would upgrade the light then again to Metal Halide, or any other gas discharge lamp.
Either way, we will need to know what your plans on stocking are, and the overall direction of the tank to give you more precise info...