New 25 gallon - letting the sand settle

[portableSin]

For those of you who read my thread about my Eclipse twelve...I got my paycheck and decided to have a little more fun than that. I bought a 25 gallon tank and an Emperor 280 gph filter.
I put live sand in there, and (making my first mistake as a saltwater aquarist) wasn't gentle when pouring in the water, so the sand kicked up fine sediment everywhere. Now the tank is extremely milky and the sand is settling at a very low rate. At this point, the water is clearly "milky," but upon close inspection one cannot see a single grain of sand (i.e., the kicked up sand is extremely fine).

My question is this: Should I let the sand settle naturally, or should I just plug in my filter and let the mechanical filtration take care of it?

Thanks!

Here's a picture of it so far:

[wharyat]

Yeah, just turn everything on. It will settle down.

One thing, you may want to think about removing the mechanical filtration (filter pads) from the emporer, also the biowheel. All they will do is keep your ammonia and nitrate high unless the filter is cleaned daily or every other day.

Disregard removing the biowheel if you plan for FO.

[portableSin]

Originally Posted by wharyat

All they will do is keep your ammonia and nitrate high unless the filter is cleaned daily or every other day.

Assuming I remove the mechanical filtration, how do I get rid of detritus in the tank? Unless it gets removed, I figure that decay at the bottom of my tank and decay on the filter floss itself produces the same amount of ammonia and nitrate...but I know I'm usually wrong.

Originally Posted by wharyat

Disregard removing the biowheel if you plan for FO.

I am planning on a FO tank, but I do have some live rock and live sand in there. Is the biowheel still important then? If you would explain the chemistry behind this I'd be extremely grateful -- I'm trying to learn all I can. Everything about this facinates me.

Thanks.

[fish.freak]

FO= Fish Only?
I have a similar filter the penguin 330 should I remove the bio wheel and cartiges down the line if I am going to add live rock slowly?

[Loverotties]

Turn it all on !Your pic looks great! The X look nice and brite red!