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I've been thinking of setting up a SW tank for a while and I may finally start. I recently received a 30g for free. I was wondering if this was is big enough to be a starter tank. Also how much do you pay for salt. The best I could find is 32$ for 160g bucket. I have a 75g open but I think the cost of water changes would be too much.

The price on salt isnt bad at all depending on what brand of salt it is..

Also, 30g is a good tank to start out in..not too small, yet not big enough to scare your pocketbook away

160g worth for $32 isn't bad at all. That's only $.02 per gallon. I just paid $44 for a same sized bucket of instant ocean. You do have to figure in ro water unless you want to risk tapwater which can cause wonderful algae blooms and has the risk of killing all your livestock. I've heard too many disasters to even use tapwater on my freshwater tanks. Ro water usually costs around $.25/gallon and is well worth it. If you change 25% at a time it would be $2 a water change for a 30g. Now if you can't afford that you might be looking at the wrong hobby.
If you setup a 75g it's probably worth it to just get your own ro system. My RO/DI system only cost me $110 on ebay.

The salt actually lasts you a lot longer than you think.

In a bigger tank, you prolly wont have to do WCs as much either. Depending on filtration and stuff.

I've only bought 1 bucket of salt and my tank has been up since like...September maybe?

(Then again, I had 3 donations from reef club members...it all depends on who you're connected with.)

IO is the most popular/widely used salt, and it often goes on sale and is really really cheap. Buy it at sale time to save money.

Like Nate said the 30 gallon would be okay, but it'd be better to do the 75. You're going to want a bigger tank anyway. Put the 30 as a sump on the 75 and you'll be good to go. That's how my tank is set up except I have a 72 instead of a 75.

HTH

-Formerly known as the Ferretfish