Good plan. If rock is covered in coraline, its usually good rock. The whitish, brown type rock is the stuff I wonder about. Just how live it is. Base rock is excellent to expand your rock too, and much cheaper. The actual live rock will seed the base
Define rock lol. I say live rock but what alot of places sell as lr is just wet rock. Good live tock w alage, sponge, growth, ect yes that will help. Just plain "live" rock no, then u will need to jump start the cycle. Raw shrimp, ghost feeding, ect
A ton of peeps have gone mia. Some just fed up w all the spam, ect. Others life happens. Its tough, there is a good core still, but yea it can take a bit to get a reply
The fact there not active is not good. generally even after being acclimated they move around the tank. Generally hunting food. That said, tisbe pods will reproduce in your tank. Tigger pods will not. Live brine shrimp is far more nutritional then frozen. Cyclopese frozen is a good frozen food...
Even we lose fish. So the volume fish stores do , it makes sense they will have dead loss. However alot of us have also figured out just bc a lfs does it, doesn't mean we should.