I have a successful 30g FOWLR tank for about 3yrs. Keeping fish is not difficult as long as you have a fully cycled tank and a good filter system. I used mostly live rock and about 40 bio balls, a skimmer. I do partially water change weekly, sometimes every 2 weeks. All my fish are happy and healthy.
Now I'm trying to build a 100g reef tank. It's been cycled for about 5 days with
45lbs live rock
40lbs live sand
40lbs bio active live sand
60 lbs sugar sand which has very tiny fine size so that air doesn't get trapped much in between (used as the bottom layer for nitrate reduction purpose).
There are 88lbs of live rock coming in next week. I think I need more live sand to make a DSB (it's a little beyond 2" right now) here's how i arrange the sand layers. First layer is 60lbs of surgar sand, eggcrate on top of it to secure the rocks and prevent sand shifters from disturbing the bottom sand layer. second layer is 40lbs of livesand then I stack the rocks. Third layer is bio active live sand.
I use the sealife pro 150 with built in skimmer (very efficient) as filter. I'll remove the 3/4 bio balls later when the tank completes its cycle.
I'll design a circulation system later on. I currently use 3 power heads for circulations. Lighting includes two 250W MH 12k, four actinic 65W PCs, 2 cooling fans, hood built by myself. Here's the pic of my 100g tank. I dimmer the light in my digital camera so that the tank doesn't look too bright.
how many boxes did u get for 45 lbs?