I was planning on doing the 4 month black out thing (BRS 4 month cycle), but a combination of getting impatient and my old tank needing to get broken down much earlier make me accelerate the process.
I moved 10 or so frags/corals from a smaller tank 2 weeks after the display was stood up (everything had been cycled a month before). Then added another 15 a couple weeks later and another 15 at the 2 month mark.
I am not advanced by any mark, and probablh lucky — or will learn my lesson in the next couple months, but avoided any coral casualties so far (outside of a plate coral that was doa). My hammers and torches have all split heads in the last month.
Everything I added, has been pretty easy LPS, plus a few gonis and mushrooms. And nothing expensive. I had a couple Montis I transferred over from the other tank that are doing fine (again easy stuff and cheap).
My rock was precycled for a month before adding it to the display and then I added some live rock from tbs (about 15% of the total rock). I also added a crap ton of pods and some stuff from ipcs, which should help accelerate the microbiome and maybe help with stability (I really don’t know)
My Alk has been very stable the first couple months. ph less so (working on that), but was ok 7.9-8.2. And N and P ar3 full of swings as you would expect in typical new tank (highs and lows, but all within an acceptable range. Eg N 2-20 and P .03 - .2’s). Those numbers need to level out before I put anything expensive into the tank.
No major ugly phase yet outside of the normal diatom bloom. Correline started showing up on the dry rock about a month in and has been very small spots. The stuff on the live rocks is growing pretty quick
TLDR: maybe I am just lucky, but I have gotten away with it so far. Don’t add anything expensive
