So I decided to go back to saltwater and I forgot how fun it can be to start up

I now transformed my freshwater planted 36 gallon acrylic tank into a saltwater setup with 40 pounds of soon-to-be live sand and 20 pounds of "dead" live rock(soon will have more) from my previous saltwater tank from 3 years ago.

For right now, I got a florescent T-8 with a reflector from my previous setup. I bought a LED strip today but it was sad when I came to realize that my florescent lighting was much brighter because the LED's just focused on a particular spot instead of spreading the rays across the whole tank.

But oh well, this florescent is still real bright enough to host low-moderate light inverts and soft coral. I was able to raise a bubble coral and mushroom coral with this same light fixture three years ago.
In the future I will have a Radion light fixture setup which uses bigger LED bulbs and adjustable settings.

I'm thinking about running this tank with sponges, sea fans and sea squirts, and red, blue, or green shrooms. I might just make the tank's personality a "Deep ocean look". Any suggestion on ways to simulate the deep ocean?

My current tank mates are a true percula clown fish and a scooter blenny. I wont add any more fish until my live rock starts to get active. I just had to add some cheap fish to help cycle my tank.

I am currently working on a homemade protein skimmer using airstone power. wish me luck lol.
My mechanical filtration is a hang on filter rated twice more than my tank's volume. I do this so I can keep my tank clear without having to have a big clean up crew and then when I get a sump going, I will get rid of it and just use a filter sock. this will help lower my nitrates and a protein skimmer will pick up the rest.

I use a powerhead that is pushing a 225 gallons/Hour and I got a big chunk of live rock today to help jump start my dead live rock. Does anyone know how long it normally takes and if there's anything that I can use to speed up this process?

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36 Gallon Saltwater reef tank
Ocellaris Clown, Scooter Dragonet, sandsifter star, Decorator crab, emerald crab, coralline snails, blue leg hermit crab, and horseshoe crab.
Zooad's and shrooms
40 pounds of Live sand, 20 pounds of LR

How long it takes to seed the Live Rock? for the organisms to grow into the other Rock, that will take quite some time for it to take over all of it. Or are you just wondering when the Coralline will take over?

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I was wondering about both. I put in a pound of live rock today to add in micro organisms for my tank. And I got my power head circulating the tank and I aquascaped the rocks so I can minimize dead spots on the rocks.

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36 Gallon Saltwater reef tank
Ocellaris Clown, Scooter Dragonet, sandsifter star, Decorator crab, emerald crab, coralline snails, blue leg hermit crab, and horseshoe crab.
Zooad's and shrooms
40 pounds of Live sand, 20 pounds of LR

It will take some time for the whole rock to get colonized by the bio critter, over the next few months. But the Coralline will grow if effect on how well your water is maintained. To help that out, you can scrape some Coralline off an existing rock, scrape it off into some water flow area, this will spread it thoughout the tank faster.

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