it's good u are setting a salt tank up. in a few months you should be able to give good advice to customers in your store.
1.) put your sand in (use aragonite based sand, save the money and buy it dead. the live sand your store is selling is more than likely dead anyway..)
2.) put your rock in, take your time and set it up like you want it. i tend to build my rock wall towards the back of the tank, but I leave 4-5" between the rock and the back glass so the fish can get back there and I can clean the back glass. make a lot of caverns, caves, etc.
this is the fun part.
3.) fill with RO/DI water and mix your salt. 1/2 cup of salt mix per 1g of water. start with a little less though, so add 10 cups of salt mix, and over the next few days check with a hydrometer - your after 1.024-1.026 salticity. its easy to add it afterwards to get it up to 1.024-1.026 than take it away etc.
4.) let the sand settle (water will be clear after this happens)
5.) turn your powerhead on
6.) turn your heater on, you want the water temp to stay at 78-80 degrees
7.) drop a peice of small raw shrimp in the tank and leave everything alone, with the lights off, for a few days
8.) start testing for ammonia, you should see it start to spike
9.) when ammonia is zero, start testing for nitrates, you should see it start to rise
10.) when ammonia is zero and nitrates are positive (5-10 etc) add some inverts from your fish store, i recommend hermit crabs
11.) turn the lights on a few hours a day, not too much, just enough to observe the tank
i am prob forgetting a few things but this is a good basic easy and cheap way to start. do not buy or use any canister filters, thats a big problem commercial fish stores make - they carry mostly canister filters, so they recommend/sell those to people wanting to setup a reef tank - and that's a big no no. your filtering by rock only at this point in the setup.
