Live Sand - Good... or waste of money?

[RGS88]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Not to mention rock can shed an incredible amount of crap while it cycles...

I read somewhere that if you're using live rock to cycle a brand new tank... to keep the sand out at the beginning as there will be a lot of die off/shedding that needs to be cleaned up/siphoned from the bottom of the tank. That would be tough to do with sand in the bottom of the tank as opposed to cleaning stuff off of the bottom plate of glass. The advice was to cycle a new tank "only" with live rock and nothing else, then once the tank is cycled and stabilized, add sand after that point.

Don't know if this is all true or not. I just remember reading it somewhere in a Reef book.