Live Rock

[Ruth]

I feel like one of my kids - the first thing that popped into my mind was "ya but" I think what you are describing would be the ideal situation - unfortunately the only way to do that in this part of the world would be to get some "live" rock from another reefer that happens to live within an hour or two of you and get that into an already cycled tank. Our problem is that any "new" live rock from a distributor will have to travel some distance and time thereby making a cycle almost inevitable because you are going to have some die off or am I missing something here? I am just starting up another tank. I have the water in with some water from my established tank. I need about 3-400 lbs of live rock. How am I going to get that without any die off ergo no cycle to kill what is there?