First, I don't think that there is probably anything to the fish hormone theory. If it was true there would be no point in letting a tank lie fallow after an outbreak of ich. Have you added fish back into your
DT? If not you could just add the sand and wait to put the fish back to avoid any chance of ich. I guess that you could get sand shipped to you that still has live micro inverts in it but I think a lot would die off in shipping. Why not just buy a chunk of uncured
LR or some
LR rubble at the
LFS and
QT it until it cures? Stick it in your tank and instant fauna. Or put some sand from your tank in the
QT with it and (since I think that you don't have
LR in your tank) you could just transfer this sand once the critters have had time to populate the sandbed. Then you could stick the
LR in your
sump. Or get a couple of cups of LS from a fellow reefer. Even better, get a cup from a couple different reef keepers and increase bio-diversity in your tank. Whichever way you go if you
QT, just add a tiny pinch of food every day or two.
It is OK to disturb a tiny portion of the sandbed each water change but not to vacuum it. You will just destroy the anaerobic layer that you need for denitrifing bacteria.
