I dont know if i should put in my two cents or not but I have never been one to hold my tongue. lol I have set up 4 tanks in the past year and didnt see an ammonia spike or anything ever in any of the tanks. In my opinion if you buy cured live rock and after a week or so you dont see a spike in ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate and you take a couple of the rocks out and smell them and they dont smell like rotten eggs or anything bad I would add a hardyish smaller fish. monitor everything over the next 2 weeks and if everything is good I would add another fish. This is just my way of starting new tanks.

Here I thought we were talking about possibly burning a fish's gills with ammonia? :neutral:

Your tank is most likely 99% cycled anyway, so you are not likely to be causing any damage to a fish, but this doesn't stop people from wanting to bring awareness to the fact that you don't need to use a fish to cycle a saltwater tank. That practice is very archaic. In the future, someone reading this thread may read that they don't need a fish to cycle the tank and that is one or ten less fish going through the suffering. I say it makes it worthwhile. :)

Some people feel strongly about using fish to cycle a tank because it causes unnecessary painful damage to an animal. You are on a fish forum; there are lots of people on here passionate about fish! :wink:

Thanks for all the info guys,

It nice to see so many people passionate about the hobby, i sometimes feel alone in this hobby as the wife thinks it's a waste of money and others are just don't get it.

I spend alot of time reading on the internet and find so many contridicting arguments, i just want to do the best I can.

BTW, was staring at my tank yesterday and had an attack!!!
I started rearranging all the rock, it started with one rock then the whole thing look like crap!!! After an hour of frustration i came up with something.

I'll post a pic later, the water was too cloudy.:biggrin: