Hello Jennifer. Nice to meet you. As you probably know this can become a life long obsession and you can put as much or as little in it as you like. If I were you I would start with just fish and rocks but get your lighting so that later you can add some corals. All the corals you will want to keep require lighting. Like many things there are very easy and cheap fish and really difficult and expensive fish. I would start with easy, cheaper fish, no mandarins, pipefish, seahorses etc. The cheapest and easy fish are called damsels like clownfish. They will eat almost anything and live very long, like 25 years. The problem with many of the cheaper damsels are they think they are the King of the tank and will bother anything else you try to put in there. Some people start with them and then give them back to the store and get other things. The store probably won't give you anything for them but at least they will have a home. Then you can move on to other fish that will be able to live out their life without bothering other things. Fish like Royal Grammas, wrasses, bleenies, and gobies are all easy and average about $35.00 or so.
Eventually if you like what you have and are able to keep them alive you can get some easy corals. Then it gets more complicated because you will have to be concerned with water purity more than with just fish.
Good luck and I wish you well.
Paul
Eventually if you like what you have and are able to keep them alive you can get some easy corals. Then it gets more complicated because you will have to be concerned with water purity more than with just fish.
Good luck and I wish you well.
Paul