Newbie saltwater guy planning purchases! Am I missing anything? Few ?

[Mirya]

 

I think the Auto Aqua Smart is one of the ones I looked at and is roughly double the one listed earlier. I was planning on getting the Hydor and putting the sensor in the back, that would work right? (it doesn't have to be in the front? Sorry noob question heh..)

 

As for dry rock, I looked at Reef Cleaners and was planning on getting their 30lb package, I thought that the rule was ~1~1.5lb a gallon? Either way from past experience with FW scaping I would rather have more than less to scape with, I hated running out of rocks/wood and often really hindered some of my scapes.

 

Another rock question, what is the best way to form structures? I have seen people drill and use poles, and I have seen people putty them together, and some people just stack..

 

The sensor has to be in the back -- in the chamber with the return pump. That is the chamber that will be dropping in height with evaporation.

 

The Reef Cleaners rock is pretty porous. I bought the 15lb package and used about half of it to scape my Nuvo8.

 

As for how to form your structure, any of the ways you mentioned is feasible. When using dry rock, I think either drilling and using acrylic poles or epoxying is nice. It gives a really stable structure. If you plan on getting something burrowing (eg pistol shrimp) it means you won't have to worry about rock slides. You can do more fancy structures like pillars and bonsai with the drilling/acrylic pole method. When I've used live rock I've just stacked them, as I haven't wanted to leave the rock out of water for extended periods of time to play with things, but you could still drill or epoxy live rock as well.

[ReefWeeds]

 

 

[Edit]

But honestly, I don't see them as being anywhere near a necessity. Especially for a tank that's just starting out and doesn't even have any corals yet.

I agree with this. I am just adding a doser, 6 months into having the tank. With regular water changes, I didn't even need to start dosing until about a month ago as my corals started to grow and use alk/cal. I say hold off on the doser, hand dose when you need to start until you get a good feel about what your tank is using and then go for the doser.