Large tank cycling

[Hobby Doc]

I'm in the process of setting up my 180 gallon freshwater tank from custom aquariums but I'm not quite there. I filled it to see if there were any leaks in my plumbing. One of my threaded pipes was sweating, so I emptied it enough to fix that problem and refilled it. It's not in its final place because I still have some electrical work to do. Right now, I have it set up with the heater on and the sump pumps running. I'm floating my driftwood so that I can scape it without worrying about the wood floating away. I will have to empty the tank almost completely in order to move it into its final place and scape it. 

That brings me to my question. Would you recommend I start cycling the filter now so that I can get a jump start on things, or would you wait until the substrate is in place? If I do a fish in cycle, I will have to remove the fish before I scape it. In a 180, that might be hard to do. I have a full bottle of TSS, but I'm reading on various forums that it is more meant for slow rise of ammonia like you would see with a fish in cycle. I could order some Dr. Tim's One & Only and do an ammonia cycle, or I could wait. I've been working on this project for a while and I'm starting to get antsy. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[lefty o]

no matter how you are planning on doing a cycle, fishless, fish in, or bottled bacteria. i would start now, that will give your wood, sump, and surface of the glass etc a chance to have bacteria colonize on it. when you tear it down to move it, ideally it would only be down for a few hours, so you can manage to keep a lot of the bacteria alive.

[KBOzzie59]

No better time than now.

[RockMongler]

Yeah, you can definitely get your filter going!  As long as you keep the filter media wet, the BB you get established now should be fine.  Same for any other stuff.  As long as you keep it moist, anything established now should be good.

[Hobby Doc]

OK, so here's my plan... I'm going to add enough ammonia to get it to 2ppm (~15 mL accounting for the sump), then add the TSS. I'll recheck in 2 days and then daily after that. I'll aim to keep it at 2 PPM until after the nitrite spike.