Newbie that needs help

[BigG10905]

Ok so I have been on R2R for a little while and have been asking questions and advice from all of your expert aquariests. Now I have made the plunge from my lovely freshwater and discus to this very scary saltwater adventure. After do research for about a month thought books, internet, LFS, and here I decided on a FOWLR tank to start due to the ease from freshwater. I bought a 220 gallon pre-drilled tank with double overflow from a LFS that was trying to get rid of it. So now am in the process of moving fish and cleaning my 125g for my sump. In the meantime I was told by my LFS to only use all live rock for the tank but at 8.99/lbs that almost 2 grand. I have heard of making dry rock and curing it to become live tock. My buddy who has been doing this for years had some dry rock that he wasn't using and after some things I'm not proud of (lol) obtained this rock for FREE!!!! Now its in my converted 37g QT with 40lbs of tahitian black moon sand and 14 lbs of live rock. I added some bacteria to help speed it up. Is this the way to go or should I just get all live rock? Now the LFS said i should get a skimmer called The Reef Octopus XS Diablo 250, but I thought with all the water I needed a skimmer that did 350. He said that I am only skimming the water for the DT. Also he told me to us a submersible pump and a UV sterilizer also. The same guy told me to buy a coralife T5 light system for around 800 bucks. Now is this all true or is he just not doing me any favors. So In all I need help with is:

Skimmer: what kind and what size
UV Sterilizer: What kind and if needed
Filteration: what kind and what size
Pump: Size, kind, and GPH
Powerheads: Kind and how many
Heaters: Kind, size, and number of heaters
Lighting: everything
set-up: correct or is something wrong
future advice

Thanks everyone

Gregg

 

[marvelousone]

You can use dry rock. over time it will become live. I would mix in some live rock. You can find live rock cheaper than 8.99. I would build a refugium. 125gal. would make a nice refugium.. You can put skimmer in it, that i would only run 5-6 hours a day if you have macroalgae. You can put your heater in there to.Get a heater rated to handle the amount of gals. tank you have. As far as pump 900gph at what length pipe you used. You need power heads. it depends on the return pump. strong gph return pump and one power head. Or two power heads. As for as lighting goes. It depends on if you are going to do coral in the future. T5's are fine. do you have a canopy or not. you can get lighting cheaper than $800. If you spend 800 on light than go with led's. I like mh with t5's. everyone has their on liking on that.