newbie ??s

I would say no less than 20Gallon...30 gallon long is like the perfect size though because it will give u a bigger fuge.. thats what mine is. Base rock is pretty much plain old rock (texas holy rock for instance) it doesnt have anything growing on it, but if you put it in a tank with a few pieces of live rock organisms from the few pieces will "seed" onto the Base rock, causing it to become live.... if you plan on a mandarin, a tank fuge if almost the ONLY way to go, unless you like spending lots of money buying copepods, because that is the only thing they eat..and if you dont have a fuge that is breeding copepods constantly the mandarin will starve and die...and no I do not use ocean water...i get RO/DI water pre salt mixed from my local fish store..ocean water just has too many parasites. Also yes you can net your own fish, but i live in north florida and we don't have too many nice fish up here...but i do catch urchins, star fish, sea squirts, hermits, snails, and use them as either store credit or to re-vamp my clean-up crew. Every once in a while i will see a spiny puffer which are really cute, but really aggressive too! (and not reef safe) which is why i also have a 70Gallon aggressive only fish tank.