Finally, live rock arrives tomorrow
 

and everything is set up and ready to go after several months of putting the pieces together.

A few questions.

Obviously I wait for ammonia an nitrites to be zero. But what about nitrates?

I was thinking I'd do a big water change after a couple of weeks to bring down nitrates.

Once nitrates are less than 10 ppm, should I add fish, or still wait longer to let the system mature?

Also while the live rock is curing I thought I'd leave partial lights on half of the day to start up some coralline growth, does this make sense?

I would ask Zerandise how he went about it - he seems to be having a lot of fun! And taking his sweeeet time... :cool:

Yah, I wish I had waited longer in the beginning. Too late smart.

I would personally wait for as long as you can stand... I had my rock sitting in a holding tank for 3 months, I just recently put the stuff in my display tank. After adding a few snails, a couple mushroom frags and a xenia, I think I'm just going to sit back and watch the tank for another little while... its pretty neat seeing all the stuff that goes on in the tank without fish to distract you. I found another patch of mushrooms on one of my tonga brances today in addition to the one I found a couple days ago. This hobby never ceases to surprise me =)

-Richer