need to buy sand...

cool thanks. Do you need any light, mechanical or chemical filtration when starting or cycling a reef tank???

 

Definately don't need light. Probably best to avoid it as a matter of fact so as to not encourage algae growth.

Chemical filtration and mechanical filtration aren't really needed at this point either unless you are using some sort of wet dry filter, in which case you'd like to have it on-line so that it gets colonized with bacteria as well.

I will not run my skimmer while my tank cycles because I don't want to mechanically pull out things that could be feeding the bacteria.

 

I hear ya...but I do think there's something to it:

Here's a patent on live sand if you want to get down to the nitty-gritty (sand-pun! weeeee!)

United States Patent: 6376229