Yesterday, I bought my first SW aquarium, and I've read your entire thread, Updates on new SW tank, with great interest. I did a lot wrong yesterday, but thanks to a good shop (I can't recall the acronym for it at the moment) and your posts, I think I can perhaps salvage my aquarium. Actually, I may be headed to a nano reef setup -- I'm not sure what size is nano vs. a regular reef. So here's what I did yesterday (stupidly, before I started reading!):
I purchased a bent glass 12.5 gallon aquarium with compact blue & daylight lighting, a bak-pak2 protein skimmer, a heater, 20 pounds of live sand, and 18 pounds of figi live rock. Sorry -- I just didn't know that I should have waited for the rock. Today, after doing some research I went back and got a second small pump to boost the water movement, and test kits for pH, ammmonia, nitrite, nitrate, and salinity. At this point, I guess I just need to start daily testing and get ready to cycle the system. I hope after a silly start that I can follow Woody's (is that the right name?) good lead and do this right. Ultimately, I'd like to have inverts, corals, and maybe ONE fish, max (maybe a maroon clown). Is that realistic for this system?
Here's a picture of it so far: