I used the shrimp method to cycle my baserock before I put in LR. All I did was grab a frozen prawn from the freezer and threw it in the tank. For the first few days, the tank smelled really bad (kind of reminded me of a chinese fish market). I had a somewhat tight fitting glass lid over this thing, so you could only really smell it when you lifted the lid up (thank goodness!). After a few days, the smell stopped. I threw in a pretty large prawn into the tank... it took nearly two months to cycle the whole thing. In retrospect, I should have probably used only half of what I put in there... or at least remove the shrimp after the first week or so.
Long story short, after the cycle completed, I did a near 100% water change, and put in LR. Haven't had a problem so far *knock on wood*
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-Richer