First life in tank. Means ill need CUC Soon. Need your thoughts.

[southerntnreefer]

Great information on this thread. I am about 1-2 weeks from adding water to my 1st nano reef build. Just recently stumbled across the BRs 4 month recommendation of no lights and I must say.....I am bummed! But I've had tanks in the past with endless battles of algae and it's terrible. So I'm going to follow it. I'm focused on a year from now not next month. But man, it's going to be tough. Can anyone recommend bacterial additives to aid in my cycle and establishing good parameters so when lights come around I'm in a great spot with respect to water quality?

I adjusted a bit. I didnt do 3 months of no light, i did 2.5, and i just put first zoa frags in this past weekend.

Ill say i got no diatoms, i got a bit of GHA, right before i added CUC. so i added a variety of like 50 snails. Then i added a one spot fox, and a bi color blenny. I havent seen any bad algae since. It wasnt as bad as it could of been, just a bit of patches of gha, nothing my snails and utilitarian fish didnt eat right up. I used Microbacter 7 when i cycled, and when i saw the GHA, i changed out the floss in my filter cup, scrubbed some with a tooth brush, then dosed microbacter 7. Killed skimmer for 4 hours, and repeated for a few days. Then my utilitarians got here, and they took over. Im getting the good layers of rock colors, red brown, hopefully on to purple now. Fish are happy. my nitrates are low, Phos is a bit high, but cheato is naturally bringing it down. I attest this all to the waiting a couple months on the lights, utilitarian fish and cuc, as well as running my carbon and cheato reactors since the first fish went in.