got some questions......

First of all, I love mt. dew! Second, try your local want ads fore a cheap tank, or go to your local fish store (LFS) and ask around, sometimes people are getting rid of tanks cheap, my 75 gallon was $20. 55 is a good tank, but with saltwater, bigger is better (right Oriongirl!!). The bigger the tank, the more forgiving towards your mistakes. Live Rock (LR) is recommended at 1 to 1.5 lbs per gallon. Yup that means you will be spending a lot of money on it. I will be using only about 10 lbs of LR and the rest just cheap base rock, so the LR will "seed" my base rock, it's like cultivating your own LR. You don't need a RO filter, but it wouldn't hurt. You can buy bottled water from walmart, and it is usually RO, or in my case I have the best water in the state coming out of my tap, and it works fine untouched (acoording to local reefers). Howe much salt, well when you buy salt it typically comes with a gallon amount, and that tells you how many gallons you can make with it. You cant use regular salt, you need to use special marine salt, check out petsmart.com for GREAT deals. As for algae issues, most tank have a cleanup crew consisting of crabs, snails, and starfishes, as well as bottom feeding fish. Saltwater tanks aren't any harder to setup, nor do they require any more maintenance, you just can't slack off like you can (and most have) with a freshwater setup. You need to stay on top of everything. SAltwater tanks need to be cycled for 4 to 6 weeks before you can add any life to them.

I would recommend a 75, that way if you make some mistakes, you won't kill everything in the tank. The bigger the tank, the less chance there is that your mistake will harm the critters! If you get enough LR and have a 3 to 4" deep sand base (DSB) you won't need a filter running all the time. Although you will need to remember that you need to have 10x tunover on all the water in your tank. In my 75, I have 825 gph moved around in my tank using 2 powerheads and 1 canister filter. Having a filter is a good idea in case you need to run it in an emergency to remove toxins from the water, you can using activated carbon in your filter.

One thing to point out--the amount (volume) of salt mix used to create saltwater is not an exact measurement. Salt will vary in volume according to humidity levels. Thus, a cup of salt in Wyoming will be much more than one cup in Florida. The use of a hydrometer provides a measure of the waters specific gravity, which is a rough estimate of the amount of salt in a given volume of water. (ie--one cup of saltwater is X amount water, X amount salt, X various other elements). The specific gravity used in most saltwater tanks is between 1.021 and 1.026. This must be tested--guess work will result in fluctuating salinities that stress your fish.

Also--you never add salt directly to the aquarium once it has been filled. The saltwater should be prepared in a separate container and added to the tank. Pouring salt directly into the tank is a bad idea. It can be done for the initial fill, but never once inverts or fish have been added.