This 75 gallon display tank, and the 29 gallon sump, are new. I also have a 20 gallon down stream of the 29. The 20 has a shallow sand bed of about 15 pounds oolitic, plus 20 pounds of reef ruble, all established for six months on another tank setup. The 20 also contains my skimmer plus the evicted tenants from my other tank. For the display, I put in 100 pounds dry rock, and then I added 10 pounds live rock from my other tank. The display is bare bottom. I consider the water nutrient rich because I had heavily stocked the display with macro algae I collected locally. By heavily, I mean a 5gallon buckets worth. It was also packed with thousands of inverts. A good part of this died off, kick starting my new tank cycle. I then removed most of the macro algae, leaving some specimens, plus all the inverts to establish. At the one month point, my parameters for the nitrogen cycle are all good (all undetectable, including nitrate), but I'm sure the dry rock needs more time to establish. Green film, red hair, and diatoms are growing faster than my macros. Grass stems have died back, but the rhizomes are growing. From my experience, this is just a continuing part of a new tank cycle, and I would rather not worry about nursing the grass while I did nutrient export. I think your plans are still workable, but I wouldn't expect explosive macro algae or grass growth up front. That may be more evident for you since you don't have cured live rock or sand in the works. As for the bio balls, I will only add them if I don't see grass and macro growth, and if nitrates remain undetectable; otherwise, I prefer to keep nitrates low for the corals that I will add to the display in another month or so.
