No base or liverock

you'll be fine adding 90% base rock. just put some in every week, shouldnt case any mini cycles with base rock.

 

Awesome.
So the tank will cycle and then I can add base rock at anytime, but not all at once? Could I even add a couple fish as long as the tank is cycled before I add any rock?

 

yea but try to keep the fish to a min. until you get all your rock installed. IMHO

 

Fish won't like it psychologically. They'll have no place to hide, and they really don't like having nowhere to rest from the currents.

 

I think you could use one of those frag racks(made from eggcrate(light diffusser)) to lift them off the sand.

 

Yeah, but then you're not really doing a reef so much as a frag tank...

 

yea but whats really the difference between the two besides one is supposed to a display and the size of the corals.(possibly some animals I guess).

 

One is a display that somewhat mimics an area/type of reef not normally done in a display tank, while the other is a giant frag rack on top of sand.

 

+1,

With all the base rock your adding you can have some small problems with either phosphates or nitrates and are probably giving yourself a higher rate of die off. Just imo. It can be done but you will probably have to wait a little longer for everything to seed and that can take months in some cases.

happy reefing

 

the point of both is to keep corals. The rock isn't extremely important, you can have a frag tank with some live rock. Don't get to caught up in the details, I have seen reefs with inverts only and i have seen frag tanks with clean up crews. To me the only difference is one is meant as a display the other is not. I say to each his own if someone wants a rack in there reef tank.