Rinse the sand? I totally disagree, if you rinse the sand you will lose all the most fine particulate matter in the sand. While that may result in an initial quicker clearing of the water this loss is not desirable. if you read articles by Dr. Ron Shimek on deep sand beds, a good sandbed is mostly composed of the finer grade sand, with very little of the larger grade...this allows the burrowing critters to get in and around better and allow the denitrifying process to work best. I got the aragonite sand in my tank shipped directly from the shole source in the Caribbean (benefit of the Southdown supplier being a personal client of my father's aggregate testing business for over 20 years). I never rinsed the stuff. What I did do is put it though a graded sieve machine and graded it out. I kept all the stuff under one milimeter and then added a very small portion of the larger back in. My sendbed works great from this.
Moreover, whether you trade the livesand in depends on whether it is actually live sand that came out of a tank or commercial "live sand" from a bag. The commercial livesand is crap, the important stuff like the worms can't live in a bag that long. On the other hand you really do need to seed your sandbed with good livesand. The worms don't really live in liverock so they do a **** poor job of seeding the bed. I tried the rock route and after 3 months nothing. I added about 3 or 4 pounds of livesand that I got from Salty Critter and a guy from this board and within about two months my sandbed was CRAWLING with all the critters. Just make sure that the person you get your sand from has an immaculate tank. No ick, no nuisance algea, no aiptasia, etc. Best to SEE the tank you are getting it from. Also not a bad idea to quarantine the sand...ick and most other predeators or parasites will die after a few weeks without fish or corals to prey on. You could still feed the livesand just a little once a week, that way the critters don't starve, but there is probably enough leftovers in any good livesand for them to live a month on anyway.
As for the rock, I agree with what is said on here, rinse gently or mist with some ro/di water..that might chase out any rock crabs or mantis shrimp. Don't use regular water as the chlorine in municipal water will kill the coraline algea and most anything else as well. Also don't leave the rock out of water too long or many of the best stuff on the rocks, such as sponges, will croak, not to mention when sponges go the cycling will take a lot longer. Also, if you want to you need not cycle the rock in tank because if you do so you will probably need to do at least a 75% waterchange after cycling prior to adding livestock. If possible you should cycle in a rubbermaid or something with a moderate amount of light on the rock while cycling to preserve the coraline algae. This is better in my opinion because then you can take the cured rock right out at the end of the cycle, pull off any dead sponges or macro algae, and put it right into the pristine water of your tank. All the little detritus and other crap that the rock has shed over the curing period will be left at the bottom of the curing contained to be tossed along with the crappy curing water. Also, if you hear a mantis shrimp or anything during the curing process, it will certainly be easier to pull out the rock and do a search in a rubbermaid tub than in the main tank, what with the risk of scratching the glass or acrylic during rock removal and all.
Anyway, just my two cents...or four cents
). how deep is your sandbed going to be?
