Cycling dead rock w/o live rock?

[mameloot]

I'm setting up a 72g seahorse tank.

In order to greatly reduce my risks of introducing things detrimental to the seahorses, I'm attempting to use as little live rock as possible, and instead seed the ceramic rock with the specific things that I do want. I want to avoid apistasia, and especially hydroids. I also want to avoid bristle worms; Yes I know, not normally considered bad anymore, but a local seahorser just had one of her prize pony's choke on one - so I want to avoid them in this tank. I want to have as much control as possible of the diversity in the tank.

To these ends I've aquascaped using ceramic rock (looks incredible) and fresh southdown that I had horded. I've added a couple pounds of live rubble 2 weeks ago. I will be adding some nitrobacter cultures tomorrow, as well as cultures of pods, spaghetti worms, coralline, and a few macro algeas. I'll keep the cycle going for a few months using flake food every day. Depending on my parameter patterns I might try a weak ammonia cycle, too.

I'll, of course, also stock a detrivore group of snails and mexican red hermits.

I know there's risk of hydroids coming in with most of the cultures I'm introducing, but at least it's less than if I was adding it AND a bunch of seed rock.

1) Is there anything else people would suggest to properly diversify & seed the tank with just good stuff?

2) How long do you think it'll take to cycle & seed the tank this way? I'm planning on introducing the SH's around Christmas to give the tank a chance to establish itself this way. But I also want to add a few softies, I figure it should be ready by October for them (6 weeks). Sound like a good estimate depending on parameters?

Thanks,
Michael

[Avi]

Your plan sounds well conceived. It's an interesting experiment to attempt to have as much control over what ends up in your system as you are, but I see no reason why it shouldn't work. If your sources are reliable, I doubt that you risk introducing hydroids very much. I would suggest that you use something a little more substantial than the flake food to "seed" the cycle...a dead shrimp would serve to get things going faster and make it more likely that you'd be ready on schedule.

[mameloot]

The shrimp technique sounds good, too. I'll probably cut it into smaller chunks so that it can be distributed around to contact more rock/sand.

I put in a couple tablespoons of large pellet food a couple weeks ago when I introduced the rubble. It's almost gone and those areas of sand/rock where I planted the pellets are looking more alive/brown.