90maniac....The old school general rule of thumb was to just have a fish only setup with live rock and then after running your tank for close to six months to a year THEN you start adding corals,...the reasoning behind this was that your saltwater tank's parameters will NOT be stable and will fluctuate during this time,.no matter what YOU think,.I remember when I wanted to start adding some corals I had called up marine depot ( ?) to get some bulbs and the first question asked was how long has your tank been running,....when I answered six months,they told me not to even consider it for at least a couple of more months if I was serious about really having a reef setup.
Your water and it's contents are kinda like wine,..you might have great ingredients BUT it just needs time to mature and stabilize before it'll be any good,....bottom line is to go slowly,..research everything BEFORE you start adding livestock,...and if you do start adding corals ,start off by adding something cheap to make sure everything is cool and proceeding normally.