I just signed up to the forum today so that I can follow along with this thread the entire state of Florida sitting on calcium carbonate Rock many people use them for landscaping. Is there no such thing as generic Dry Rock? .
Welcome to R2R! There's plenty of generic dry rock out there from all sorts of suppliers that runs anywhere from "good deal" up to "You expect me to pay WHAT for THAT?" But if you don't get it from a supplier that cares about what it's been exposed to (pesticide-tainted rock from landscaping suppliers for example) you're putting a lot on the line. It would really suck to save a ton of money on base rock and get a tank set up only to discover your base rock kills everything you put into the tank, and has effectively poisoned the equipment, too.
It’s funny how some people go straight to. If you can’t afford Rock you shouldn’t be in the hobby. How is the hobby supposed to survive and grow with that mentality? I haven’t set up my first salt tank yet, but someday I will.
There are some areas where you can't cut corners. Marine Aquarium salt, clean water, something to hold the water and something to circulate the water. Those are absolutes. That doesn't mean it has to be expensive, but they're non-negotiable.
There area also areas where cutting corners is going to hurt more than it helps, and might end up costing more down the line. "I found a really cheap tank on facebook
marketplace" can be great, or it can be a RedSea with an actively failing front seam being unloaded as fast as possible. It might last, or it might explode and cost you not only your livestock but the clean up and damage to your home.
The hobby grows when we can make success as accessible as possible in terms of plain, uncomplicated, instruction and clearly defined expectations of what each price bracket you encounter is going to give in return.
My "getting back into the hobby" pico was a little betta tank, and some sand/rock that I'd kept since probably 2008 at the latest. I added a planted tank light I'd had since maybe 2019, and about $10 in "premium" live rock to kick things off. Adding the first CUC and a soft coral I got for free I was in business for under $50. It was about 3gl, and well under my imaginary budget.
This basically came out looking like those bowl mini reefs. Warm color light, soft corals, macro-algae, and a CUC. It wasn't "tank of the month" material, but it was doing really well for itself right up until I ran out of room in there and realized I had to upgrade or prune. I made sure to set my budget first and found what fit in it, rather than setting the size first and expecting everything to fold down into my budget.
I’m gonna try to save where I can while still setting up a nice tank. My local fish store offered to soak whatever Rocks I buy in their sump for a while. It’s worth trying to see if yours will do the same.
That's a great resource to have! Most stores aren't going to do that unless they order in the rock themselves, because the risk to the welfare of their livestock can be pretty serious. Saving money isn't a bad thing. Having a firm or even brutally restrictive budget isn't a bad thing in and of itself. We were cautioning OP that running a big tank on a small budget is a mismatched expectation that can burn someone out of the hobby before they've really even gotten started.
