So I started this tank on the 27th December. Went to my lfs and purchased some rock and a chunk of live rock. We also started off using sea water as its meant to be easier and we live very close to the water. Our lfs sells it by the litre and they filter it so to me being a newbie it sounded easier to use for now. No stressing about salts and mixing etc. when I purchased the tank i also purchased a bag of dry aragonite. I washed that sand as well I as could but not to much. Normally your told to add rock then sand then water but we did sand first filled the tank then added rock. I then carefully added extra sand around the rock base. I made sure the base of the rock was on the base of the aquarium first. The water wasn’t to cloudy at all and settled over night. Got the filter running the heater and the skimmer. I started the bacteria process using stability by seachem as I couldn’t find dr Tim’s etc. for the following week I tested the water daily for salinity and ammonia etc and added my stability as per dose on bottle. We noticed on day 3 we had a hitchhiker. A little snail nassaris (sorry about the spelling) had come in on the live rock. But we don’t mind him being there. It’s kinda cool having someone at home who seems happy enough. It’s only tiny but he cruises around and gives us something to look at. I realised this scape was doing absolutely nothing for me it needed height and shape so off we went to the lfs and found a nice big chunk that totally gave us that vertical scape I wanted to see. We had a great time checking out all the lfs stores in Brisbane. We got a great look at where to buy what. And got to see some really cool creatures along the way. Also my husband who wasn’t keen is now looking at Cade 1200’s yep we’re all hooked that’s week one. I’ll make a seperate thread for the following weeks!