Beds of media are a must, externally of course!
The aquarium I would leave bare for now, just some ocean water or a few buckets from some ones matured aquarium and your made up water with it if thats what you will do and build large wall barrier of filter wool-pre filter that catches everything as the water leaves the aquarium that I can slide out easily to rinse off under the hose with strong pressure each day.
I would build a very complex sump of multiple types of media including beds of granule sized calcium at 3 to 8 millimetres and incorporate a small skimmer at the end of the sump that is not switched on until the full cycle to early maturity is achieved.
Make the sump so that you can incorporate a large plastic tub above it of an algae bed established onto chunks of dead rock of 20 to 50 mill three high with only 8 to 10 inches of water depth above the chunks on a raised egg crate floor 30 mill up of the floor that you can reach easily to trim the algae and clean off cyano with a small paint brush when it appears. I use just basic led fluro replacement tubes of quarter watt 60 degree optic diodes of 50/50 blue and cool white at ten watts each tube, one for each four inches of width of algae bed.
Build one settling chamber per 2 thousand litres of flow through external bio filters top prevent any thing beyond water soluble organic matter from getting to your sump, or it will not work in time.
Hang a bag of marinara in the aquarium to seed with varied ammonias until ammonia levels peak very high, now add some media somewhere near the start of your external bio filter from some ones matured aquarium that will have matured intense protista communities if you can. From now on keep shaking the bag each day or so until it is nearly dissolved, add more, this needs to be done until no ammonia or nitrite shows on a test.
Once the sump system is biologically far to strong for ammonia or nitrite to show at all, do a massive water change and add very open base rock, not live rock and switch on wave makes or similar from then on!
Hang a small bag of marinara in your sump as you build up inverts in the display aquarium and some small section of live rock with colour. Start skimmer and Finish adding inverts as in corals, shrimps, etc, completely, before you add fish of any kind!
Now do regular water changes for 6 months and from then on,when you think the tank needs a water change.After that length of time,i do a water change twice a year,maybe,thats up to you,if all bio sections,including the algae, is done righ,there is no need for a water change ever again!
For mew it should be,aquarium,pre filter,algae,settling pre filters,bio filter,sump with skimmer and bubble defusing sponge,return pump,done!
But that’s how I have always done mine and friends for over 30 years now, hope what ever you do works well for you.
