[Cliff]

Thanks for all of the replies everyone, this is very helpful.

I’m a little concerned about curing the live rock outside of my tank as I will only have 20 to 30% live rock to cycle with, the remaining 80 lbs is dry (dead) rock. I want a good sized ammonia source to kick-start the cycle. After the cycle is complete, I can do a large (40% +) water change to remove the nitrates and phosphates my skimmer doesn’t remove. This is why I wasn’t planning on cooking / curing the rock before placing it in my main tank.

After reading of the responses, I’m thinking it would be best to cycle with the lights off. After all, good filtration and minimal algae is the goal and ( as others have pointed out), I should not be risking that over a few corals that “might” survive.

It will be a lights off cycle for me. Hopefully anything interesting will survive but I won’t worry about it if it doesn’t

I was planning on adding the sand substraight after I have completed the cycle. Just didn’t want to have to try and clean algae off the substraight should I get some while cycling. But after reading some of the feedback here, I think I’ll add it with the live rock this weekend. I’m hoping the cycle will be finished up in a month, but I will let my test results tell me when that happens. I was going to start off slowly with one or two emerald crabs and some snails, turbo snails I think but I still have to read-up on snails a little more to figure that out. After that I’m going to slowly add some fish. I only want easier / hardier fish such as a faxface, yellow tang, and some type of clown fish. I only have to research there compatibility to make sure. Once I know I successfully keep a FOWLR tank, I will start with some easier / hardier corals, some types of leathers, mushrooms, and zoas. I just need to research and figure out which specific corals I will start with. I planning on doing a lot of this research while the tank was cycling to divert my attention away from a big empty glass box !!!

Thanks everyone.