There ARE NO MIRACLE POTIONS OR SHORTcUtS!!!!!!!!

[Sk8r]

Here's your problem. You can have a good but weak distribution of bacteria that'll handle a bit. Overload it and it falls down under the load. Takes time to colonize all through a rock. Takes time for a sandbed to set up its layers. You dump a bunch of fish onto that, pooing and eating, pooing and eating, or vice versa--

What happens in a tank crash? well, first nitrate and ammonia as the load exceeds the bacteria's handling capacity. The water goes oxygen short, and the weakest fish and the fish with the highest demand for oxygen (usually tangs: their death is a (pardon me) dead giveaway of an oxygen problem)---the ammonia goes higher, and eventually, if you don't yank out the fish and other survivors to clean water asap, you end up with an escalating dieoff, a higher and higher load, NOW complicated by bacterial problems---you can have your bacteria die off, as well, which sort of puts you back to square one. The problem is that it's like the Richter scale for earthquakes: the problems get much, much worse at every step of this disaster. It's real sad when it happens---a person starts out all bright and shiny and picks out all these pretty fish, and then---calamity and a real mess. Just don't get in a hurry.
Here's what you OUGHT to do.
1. quarantine. every fish. 4 weeks. These fish come in with parasites. Parasites love our nicely confined little tanks with high food levels and lots and lots of fish. THey kill. Fast.
2. test. Watch your alkalinity.
3. keep it stable. Don't let anything ever get outside a good reading. A log is good.

It's possible, for instance in a tank move, to have a 5 day cycle. This is when nothing goes wrong. Murphy rules.

Prodibio isn't snake oil. But when you take all the variables that attend a load of live rock and a tank set up, it's putting a whole lot of trust in there---a given rock can come in with, for instance, a boring clam, that dies secretly inside a rock partway through the cycle. Be alert for surprises.

I wish you all the luck in the world. You sound like you've researched---and I hope you don't have any nasty surprises. I'd add one thing. IF you get into trouble, remember that ammonia is lethal---the fish takes damage and swims around fine and dies three days later of kidney failure, etc. Don't assume just because your fish is alive that the situation is ok: it isn't. If you have read ammonia, get that fish out and into clean water, which, no matter how confident you are you're right---you need to have waiting, just in case. And of course all your fish should be qt'd for four weeks in a separate water system before you put them into the dt.