[zum14]

Originally Posted by Myka

All the nitrifying bacteria you need will come in on and in the live rock. It will spread onto the dry rock along with critters and algae such as coralline. It takes quite a while for dry rock to become as biologically effective as live rock. Nitrifying bacteria is easy and quick to establish, it is the denitrifying (anaerobic) bacteria that take time. That bacteria is what processes nitrate to (mainly) nitrogen gas. This can make a big difference when trying to control nitrate build up in your tank, but many people put too large a bioload in the aquarium for the rock to process all the nitrate so those people need to come up with other means like biopellets, macroalgae filters, etc.

A small amount of food to sustain the system would be, say, a 1cm square piece of flake food or a few pellets or a piece brine or mysis shrimp. If you add too much you will end up with more nitrate than the rock can deal with, so you really don't want to add very much. Using ammonia to cycle would amount to adding a large amount of food and you would end up with a large amount of resulting nitrate you would have to deal with.

Since you have a lot of time that could be spent cycling and "cooking" the live rock, you could purchase 100% live rock and give it a 20-30 minute 1:4 vinegar bath. This will make all hitchhiking critters abandon ship quite quickly in the bath, but won't be strong enough or long enough to do much harm to the nitrifying bacteria, or more importantly, the denitrifying bacteria. Just another approach to consider (I'm not a fan of dry rock haha).

Another thought, if your system is showing any nitrate or phosphate it would be wise to keep the lights off. If there are nutrients in the water and nothing to eat algae you will end up with a nice "lawn" of hair algae or other nuisance algae.

Makes total sense. I am in no hurry and I don't mean like 2 weeks. I got lots of time. I tried dry rock this go so I would have 1. All the time to rockscape I wanted and 2. It's about 1/3 of the price to buy up here. 3. i got time. We have to factor shipping as used stuff intown doesn't come up much and well thats pretty much our only option. I'll prob bite the bullet and pay the $70 shipping to get a few pieces from jl to seed the dry rock and do as you suggest and slowly feed the tank till everything establishes. I'll keep an eye on my parameters to see if I'm feeding alright. I'll take my time stocking. I'm still not too sure what I'm getting. Lights are off as I'm still deciding on an eb4 or eb8 for my lights. Thanks very much for the help. It's kind of an odd ball one cause who wants to keep a tank full of water empty?