Hello all of you! We are a family with tropical fish experience from England. My son who is 18, last week invested in a Marine tank. I am sorry to say we took the easy option out and bought a complete reef system from a lfs. We didnt want too large a setup, it is in the dining room and we settled for a square 34 gallon tank. (Red Sea Max).The water is in with a good layer of natural aragonite spheres as a base.When setting up the tank we mixed the salt in it to the recommended amounts and let it go. We have a digital hydrometer which came with the system to monitor our water.We bought a book "The New Marine Aquarium" by Michael S. Paletta so what with all that and this excellent friendly forum we have found, I hope our experience is going to enjoyable. We have read lots of advice on here and learnt from it. Our next step will be to buy cured LR from lfs. Eventually we hope to have fish and some coral/clams or anaenome maybe. Still getting our heads around all the equipment and had never heard of a protein skimmer until now! Hello to you all and hope you will all become friends to us newbies.