First salt water tank

[caveman]

new to salt water, a buddy of mine has a few salt water tanks and he lost power a few years ago, in the winter needless to say everything in the tank died so he gave me the 40g tank , he said he would never put it back up so , i got it set up with a 200gph filter , a good temp gage , hydrometer before i knew about this site and one heater ,
my chain LFS is a chain store
i bough real washed rock ,1 inch down rock , i think i got to much rock in there, but i want a real natural environment
after i got it all filled in with water, i thought to my self thats not really natual ,so im going to get some live sand and leave some of the rock in there , (nothing living in tank yet )i have to see if i can keep this tank correct before i put anything in it .
i bought the 50g instant ocean salt, put what i though would be enuff , enuff salt for a 50g tank well i put less than 3/4 bag in there and the hydrometer is spiked out after 30 hours ,well i drained less than half the water and put new water in and the meter says 1.028 water temo 76 and holding , i put the super dechlorinator+ . i have to wait on a good test kit and refractometer , if i would have found this site first i could have done better on the start but you know ,it happens .
but i cant spend a lot of money on lights ,the light came with the tank has my hole room lite up
but i do want to get something to move more water for corel
glad i found this site

 

[david12]

its sounds all good man when you say you got the ocean salt it should tell you how much to use on the side of it are you doing fish only or coral fish only just add the live rock like you did and your tank should now start cycling wait 4 weeks or you can skip half of the cycle by adding a live rock that some esle has been using in there tank thats been running for a while

 

[caveman]

i wanted some coral,clown fish , blue hippo tang and i want the pearlscale butterfly but i read pearlscale picks at coral but i got to read more about what can be mixed and what cant be.

 

[ibew41]

look into fish compatibility and what size tanks for those fish while your tank cycles it will save you money