Need advice on equipment for 210g tank?

First salt water tank yes, fresh no. I've had a general fresh tank and also a piranha tank.

 

Appears to be first SW tank...

Please correct me if wrong.

 

Well Live rock will be your first waste of some serious $$$$ and in a F/O it will be a total waste far more then with its use in a Reef..

 

Alternatively you could make alot of your live rock and then just seed it with a few pieces of real live rock, there is some threads on here on how to do so.

 

Was just worried that you were throwing yourself into your first tank with a large sw tank. This is a hobby that will take time out of your day and most people don't understand that and think it is a piece of furniture they are putting in their house.

 

Yes this is my first saltwater tank. If I am understanding this correctly, live rock is a waste of money unless you are adding coral. Is that correct?

 

Welcome to the 3reef,
From what I gather you have decided to enter the wonderful relm of reefkeeping and now are on the way to seek out the best ways to forfill your goals , which I think is a great first step. lotts of questions and reserch is the key here. oh and patients
I would recoment that you reserch further into this and return to your lfs and make your decision as to weather you want to keep corals and fish or fish and some corals.There is acctualy a big difference here and like mentioned above it can be an expensive transfer from one to the other ie. upgrading pumps ,lights ,filters and what not.
Personaly I was also in to minds as to weather I wantd a reef tank (coral dominated) or a
Fish onlywith some basic corals.
I decided that I would like to have more of a reef tank more coral, less fish
so I did the reserch on needs of the future tank inhabitants
lighting their is alot to cover here different corals different intensities.
flow as above mentioned different corals need different current structure
chemical composition/ dosing Many corals absorb nutrients and trace elements from you water colum these need to be replaced
and so on .also some of the guys here dont like to do maintanance on their tanks so they have incorperated many automated features to their tank.
( wish I had some of these gadgets too)
Sorry this post is so long but I think it should be helpful to you and perhaps you might not recive this kind of info from your lfs.

Good luck to you and please keep the posts comming in as to let us know whats going on with your little piece of the ocean;D

 

Live rock is a waste of your money period.. I have corals for yrs and never used a live anything. L/R can and does bring in as much bad as it will good things and most of the good things die off causing more water problems. I'd never use it..

 

Rock is good whether you keep corals or not as it gives the bacteria a place to grow. As has been mentioned, you don't need to spend a ton of money on live rock. You can buy dead base rock and seed it with one piece of quality, trusted live rock as was suggested above.

 

I agree, I started with base rock and seeded with some small pieces of nice live rock. By the time you know it coraline is growing on all your rocks.