Fishless cycling a tank is not a bad idea but none of the suggested ways to do that in this thread are a good idea.
Peeing in your tank?! Really?!
I agree that you can cycle your tank with live rock but lets define what exactly cycling a tank really means.
The cycling process is basically allowing the natural bacteria species to populate them selves to a large enough population to process the waste load being produced in the tank. The primary species we are concerned about for this process are nitrosanomis and nitrobacter. These two species feed off of ammonia and nitrite to decrease it's presence in the aquarium. About All we have to do is have organic waste in the water, give the bacteria a huge place to live and force the aquarium water to it. (a little more to it than that but that's it in a nut shell)
Anyway, to answer the original question, you can cycle your tank with live rock but the tank will only establish itself enough bacteria to process the amount of waste that the live rock releases into the water. To me, this may not be the best way to go because it won't be a constant waste load. (I'll explain more later). Putting a piece of shrimp or any other organic matter into the aquarium to cycle it is also not the best method, again because that waste load is not consistent. The waste produced by Die off on live rock or a piece of dead shrimp decreases daily as it decomposes (shrinks as it rots) so the problem is that as it decreases, so does the need for the size of the bacterial population. There will only be as much bacteria present as the waste load supports. As the load decreases, so will size of the population of the bacteria, Like wise, as the load increases so will the population of the bacteria.
So you start off with a large amount of wastes that slowly decreases. This is not consistent with what fish do to our water. Fish don't add a sudden increase in waste and slowly decrease the waste they put in the water (Live one anyway) They constantly produce a fairly consistent amount of waste and the bacteria we want to manage that waste reproduce to a level to process that waste.
If your going to fishless cycle an aquarium, a daily, fairly consistent waste load needs to be introduced into the aquarium to mimic what having a fish in the tank will do to it. One method that I have done is taken some raw shrimp & water in a blender and made a slurry out of it. I strained it to get out the bigger chunks and poured the fluid into ice cube trays and froze it. (this kept it from decaying) Daily I put an "shrimp cube" into the tank to mimic a fairly consistent waste load on the the tank daily. The ammonia and nitrite would rise and fall, I'd do a small water change and add a few fish. The existing bacteria from the shrimp cube method don't know the differance from the shrimp or the fish, they just keep processing waste. my fish experienced little to no ammonia or nitrite.
Might want to get a better filter than the fluval. Depending on what your goals are will determine what type and size filter you may need but I am certain that eventually the problems that canisters have will rear it's ugly head.
Welcome to the club......Joel
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