I have no issue with testing this, but I will not use critters to test. I will do some digging to see if I can figure out exactly how much ammonia a common fish can produce (clownfish for example) and then go from there.Let's do this! I'm going to do a dry rock bottle bac as well as mimmick what ive done with my live rock start up.
I really do want to monitor everything as closely as possible to cross refference whats happening in both tanks.
You could bring other much needed experience and ideas in your system.
Like you guys have both said and couldn't have nailed it any better.
This is not a quick end all fix or approach. It really does take diligence to the highest level to maintain params and keep them locked in to be successful.
Im glad we are at least looking at and talking about this if anything.
I would think that one could show if all dry rock, all dry sand and all new equipment could process ammonia or not process ammonia from the get go with the addition of bottled bacteria or macros. My only concern would be the macros have a biofilm on them that is basically like cheating. I have no way to examine that, so may need to do that as a separate test.
The problem I see is knowing how much ammonia production a day, hour, minute to use as a starting point. This is where I can see it getting tricky. I have never looked into how many times fish pee in a day or how fast the food I feed takes to turn into ammonia, so one would have to do multiple tests at different levels of ammonia being dosed at all different times to gauge how well it works. That mean a lot of tests over and over with all new sterile starts. At least that is how I am looking at it.
The above is thinking out loud and may be a little scattered, so let me do some digging and see what I can come up with.