The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
You do need your rocks to cycle, it's not like freshwater - your beneficial bacteria doesn't live in the water column it lives on your rocks and in your sand. Once the rock is there add a raw shrimp and let it rot. Just remember to test for the ammonia spike and then nitrite with rise and then you will see high nitrates. Ammonia and nitrite will drop back to 0, then you do a big water change to lower the nitrate and that's it! Remember to stock slowly after that