Rock, water and sand

[Razzc]

We are new and need some help.

1. Where did you get your live rock?

2. Did you buy your sand or did you aquired it from the beach?

3. Do you mix your water or hump water bottles from the ocean?

4. Where is the best place to buy equipment (ie, test strips)?

Please help,

New to fish and excited

[vest0830]

1. I went straight down to the ocean at lowtide and picked it up. If you watch on AFN, they give the tide times. A real good place to get rock (if you are around foster/kadena) is at the sunabe sea wall. go down by the junkyard though, during low tide, you can walk WAY out, pretty much right to the reef and grab all the rock you can handle. Find the rock with the purple coloration on it. What my wife and I did was we took rubbermaid containers out there and filled em up. Then what we didnt use, we took back that same night. We didnt put any water in the container, just the rock. It will be ok.

2. Sand, pretty much did the same thing as the rock. I went out at low tide and picked it up. I did end up getting a crab that turned into a huge nuscence so kinda watch out for that. He was huge though, probably a little bigger than a half-dollar. Small hermits and snails...get em! (cleaning crew)

3. I get my water from the fish lady. She gets water from sesko island up north and it made a huge difference in our tank. With natural sea water (NSW) and live rock from the ocean, I didnt really see much of a cycle, and wasnt to worried about it since all of my livestock come from here. If I was to use manmade water, I would for sure cycle the tank. I take down some rubbermaid containers down to the fish lady and fill them up. I think its like $1 for 2gal, which you cant make sea water for that cheap. I am going to get some accual water containers from the monkey man store to haul the water.

4. best place to buy test equipment, I get mine from stateside, www.liveaquaria.com there prices are really good and they ship to us. (except live goods) I have also seen test strips at the PX on foster, we used them and pretty much got the same results as our kit from live aquaria. I just was a little hesitant to use a $5 test kit.

Hope I was a help!
-frank