Anyone have any advice or maybe some links that would give me some basic knowledge on saltwater tanks? I've never had a saltwater tank before, though I have done research in the past when I thought I'd be setting up a saltwater tank in the near future. But that was awhile back so I'm a bit rusty on the details now.

I think I want to start with a 55 gallon tank as I've heard that's a good size to start out at, being a bigger volume of water and therefore less unstable. I haven't decided on fish yet - obviously I want to start out with some very hardy, easy to care for species. I just want a basic setup (no corals) to learn from, then when I'm more experienced I want to get into more 'advanced' stuff like having a reef tank and more difficult fish/invert species.

Thanks in advance!

That's pretty much what I have so far. I just have a 75gal and some yellowtail damselfish since they're very hardy and also very pretty.

Mine is fish only (FO), at least for now, but a lot of experienced marine fish keepers opt for always starting a marine tank with live rock as that's supposed to be more beneficial. But honestly (and this is just my opinion) I prefer FO at first. Buying live rock can be expensive and then it's more of a let down if and when you run into problems. If you put regular sand in it'll become live with beneficial bacteria as well as anything that you add to the tank (inverts, for instance) and you can add regular rock which will also become live in time.

Make sure you do some research surrounding FO and FOWLR so that you're clued up and can decide for yourself whether you want live rock or not.

Good luck!

Yes exactly, you never know exactly what you're getting when it comes to live rock! Maybe most of the time it's fine, but if you don't want to chance it.....

I'm sure it does have its uses though - I'm not trying to bash it - I'm just not personally a fan.