New to SW need to see the light!

Welcome to AC,

I'm new as well and I've heard you want to look for 3watts per gallon. So if you have a 50g tank you'll want about 150watts combined lighting.

Lights highly depend on what you want to have. Sounds like you want a nice FOWLR (Fish Only With Live Rock) What you will want with that type of tank is a nice combination of Actinic lights (blues) and 10000k Daylights This will make a good looking color for the tank, as well as give the tank the light it needs.

If you want to do corals (takes a long time till your ready for them) then you'll probably want to go metal halide. These are expensive but I've heard they are worth every penny.

The cheapest spot you can go with your tank is the tank itself. I just bought a 55g acrylic tank for $91 bucks... If you look hard you can find a nice tank for cheap. Keep your eyes on the classifieds and on auctions. You'll find one close to you if you wait.

Your biggest expense will probably be Good Lighting and Good Live Rock.

Don't go cheap on the filtration (unless its a good brand and you find a deal)

Make sure to ask alot of questions on these forums because there are plenty of knowledgable people to answer your questions... I'm just the annoying one who tries to beat everyone to the punch...

There is a lot of debate about the usefulness of wpg. You really want to think about it in terms of depth, and what species you want. Regardless, 3 wpg may be enough for some undemanding corals, but you will be very limited.

I put two 250 watt metal halides over my 90. One reason is that you want 1 halide lamp for every 2 feet or so of tank. Also, a 90 is 2 ft tall, so you need to have enough to penetrate the tank.

For filtration in a reef, I would shun canisters and go with a good protein skimmer instead. Skimmers pull bad stuff out, canisters just trap it and let it break down to nitrate and phosphate.