Hope it helps. I usually figure a year to get a tank well balanced. Not saying you can't have a beautiful tank from the start but often it's the pods and other life in the tank that helps to keep it stable and it takes a while to get them established. Personally I'd get a large clean up crew. Several varieties of snail, hermits, perhaps mithrax crabs. Enough to stir up the bottom of the tank after you've fed the fish. It takes a surprising amount of snails and hermits and most reef tanks I've seen have very few but they seem to work well for me. You can find a pretty good deal by buying fifty or a hundred at a time. Generally the smaller crabs and snails do a better job. The small varieties of brittle stars make good food scavengers removing food the crabs don't find. You may also try to adjust your water flow to flush debris up off the gravel to help the filter remove it from the system.
