Hiya! I'm a newbie too and I'm in the process of setting up my 105 gallon reef. What I've been doing is haunting craigslist for deals from people who are leaving the hobby, moving away, whatever. I've bought 80 pounds of live rock and 100 pounds of live sand from one guy who was moving out of state. His tank had been set up for over a year. This meant I had an established cycle in about 3 days after putting all his stuff in my tank! WaHoo, right?! Then I found another guy breaking down a tank because he'd decided SW was too much trouble. I got 30 pounds of live rock from him and could have taken his live sand, but decided I didn't need it. I got fish from both of those guys, various hermits and snails, some emerald crabs, a cleaner shrimp and the rocks all had various interesting hitchhikers like feather duster worms and other little bits of color and crawly things. Oh, let's see, I paid the first guy $300 for his 80 pounds of rocks, 100 pounds of sand and fish and critters. That also came with a 55 gallon tank & lights which I was able to use for a fresh water tank and now I'm about to sell it. I paid the 2nd guy $100 for his 30 pounds of rocks and all his fish and critters. With both of them, I took most of the fish in to my LFS and got store credit and bought other fish or critters that I wanted.
The only things I've bought new have been my powerheads. We got the tank and all the necessities for it from craigslist. You can click the link in my sig to read that story, if ya want.
You can also find the local Reef club in your city and any other fish clubs in your city and watch their boards for deals or post want ads for what you're looking for, you never who will see your ad and contact you with a good deal! There are tons of people out there who have gotten bored with or are leaving the hobby for whatever reason and why not recycle their stuff and save some money, if you can?
If I had the bank for it, I'd have gone on tampabaysaltwater.com and ordered The Package from them for my entire tank. As it is, I've been doing it all piece by piece around paydays.
When I can, I'll be ordering some things from TBS to add to my tank though. I also want to order some stuff for making my refugium from ipsf.com.
Good luck and happy shopping!
