firstly, live rock is dead coral that has broken of from the reef and has been colonised by algaes, worms, pods (copepods,amphipods etc) even small corals. it does not resemble dead coral by the time it is collected it is that heavily encrusted by other life forms. it is the shipped but due to the wight of the stuff, it is shipped damp toreduce the cost. by doing this 60% of the life on the rock dies in cluding small bits of coral, some algae worms pods etc. this is then put in a large tank at the other end in the lfs. all the dead algae/animals can then rot down and be washed free of the rock and the life that surveved can start to recolonise. it is then safe to add to your tank. when you first setup your tank,you can put it in straight away as there are no fish etc in the tank that would suffer the bad water quality produced by the "die off" when it is newly shipped and there is dead life on the rock, that is "un-cured". once all the life that died during the shipping has died off, then that in now cured rock. only cured rock can be added to an existing system. live rock will provide all the biological filtration that you would need if you have enough of it.
people drill holes in the bottom of the tank so that they can have a sump underneath. (see later) . the water overflows from the tank down a stand pipe going to the surface of the water. the water overflows down the pipe in to the sump tank below. it is then pumped back up to the main tank with a large sump pump.
lighting can cost you as much as you want it to. if you want corals etc in there, then I would go for metal halide lighting which can cost as little as £40 per unit + a bulb @ around £30 from an industrial supplyer. these are called "lowbays". you can go for halides such as the arcadia series 3 which would cost you around 3500 for a double with two blue tubes. the difference is that a lowbay is just a big white box which needt to be mounted on a wooden frame above then tank. an arcadia series 3 can be hung on hanging wires from the roof or from wall brackets and looks like a section of an airoplane wing with 2 big lights on the bottom so it loks much better. heres a pic of a lowbay unit
and heres an arcadia series 3. (there are a lot of companys that do simular looking lights, some cheaper, some dearer)
you could also go for T5's if you want a hood on the tank. these don't give the same lighting as halides but you can keep the same corals you could keep with halides. if you do go for halides, the I'd go for 150 watt 10,000K bulbs.
a sump is just another tank below the main aquarium. it has weirs built in to divert the flown in an under-over fasion and you can put most of your equipment in it out of view under the cabinet. some people even have them in the garage and have the pipes through the wall.
heres a baisic pic of a sump but they are variable in there design.
this shows the overflown going through the base of thetank with the stand pipes.
anenomys will walk round the tank until they find a place they like and ten normally stay put but can go for a walk from time to time. corals do not move. (some speciese may be able to move a little like fungia SP. but is extreemly rare) corals normaly come on some sort of base normally live rock. you can stich the base on which the coral is attached to to the live rock/ocean rock by usin milliput (2 part epoxy resin) or you can do what a lot of people do and just push then in to a small gap or just rest them on.
as for equipment, you wil need a skimmer pumps to run the sump (if you have one) skimmer chemical filtration biofiltration etc if you go for lots of live rock, then you will just need a couple of large powerheads i the tank to move the water around. a large external filter is also a good idea with some biological media in just to back up the live rock. you will also need a small external to put some rowaphos and maybe some carbon in. rowaphos is a product from D-D aquarium solutions and is probably the best on the market. if you keep your phosphates at 0 or as near to 0 ar you can, then you will have a lot less algae problems. as for a skimmer, i'd go for one by either deltec or aquamedic as these are highly efficient. if you go far a sump, you will still need a skimmer heaters etc but will not need the external filters.
hope this helps answer some of the questions but it is a very broad subject and with sumps for example, there is so much you can do with them it is hard to cover everything.
ste
