New to Saltwater

[Calebsanders]

Hey guys I'm fairly new to saltwater tanks and am setting up my first with a 55gal tank. I need some advice for getting live rock, base rock, and corrals to decor my tank. What I am wondering is how would I go about adding live rock and coral to my tank

The guy at the LFS sold me 10lbs of base rock for 24$ and he can order me live rock for $6 a pound. I didn't think to ask what kind.

He told me I can just rinse off the base rock then set it in my aquarium the way I want.

I have a T8 32 watt 50/50 48" light (used it with my freshwater aquarium)

Thanks!

 

[Bectan01]

Sounds like you could do with a little bit more research into saltwater, there is so much to learn starting first time! Tell us a bit more about what you have and what you know and we can take it from there. Firstly, how big is the tank? What equipment do you have? You will have to wait a while before adding corals and it looks like you may need to upgrade your lights for that too...

 

[Calebsanders]

It's a rectangle 55gallon aquarium. I've got 2 HOB filters. One will work for a 60 gallon tank the other is a small 20gallon tank filter. All my salt levels and everything are perfect, I was just told that I needed to set live rock in before fish because they let off so much bacteria at the beginning that my aquarium isn't used to.

 

[Bectan01]

There is a bit more to cycling a tank than that. Have a look on here for staring out threads, cycling a saltwater tank. I have never used mechanical filters like that (I have the same size tank) but I would say you would still need some powerheads for water movement. Do you have saltwater test kits? A refractometer for measuring salinity? You will need to be seeing a spike in ammonia before nitrites are present and then nitrates. Can take up to 4 weeks or so before you can add fishes so you have water in the tank now? And sand? And some base rock yeah?

 

[Calebsanders]

Yea I'm waiting for payday (tomorrow) to buy a power head to get water flow going. The base rock I haven't put in just yet.
I've got the meter that measures salt levels And it's just about even everywhere. The other kit for measuring ammonia and all I don't have yet I borrowed a strip from my friend earlier and it all looked good. Gonna buy the kit tomorrow with the powerhead and whatever else imma need.

Times not really an issue because I want to make sure I do it right and not waste to much money.