Spike in perams and in a pickle

I have been putting off doing a water change because I am getting live sand delivered and am changing out my substrate it has been 3 weeks since my last one and my sand is en route and will be at my door on the 3rd or sooner. I just checked my levels and my nitrate is at 20ppm and my ammonia is at .25ppm these are obvious signs that a water change is needed and my filter probably needs to be cleaned as it is a canister filter. But i plan on doing a 50/50 when my sand comes and also clean the filter. I am a little scared of the nitrate reading should I bite the bullet and do a small one now? Or is it safe to wait the 4 days for my sand. My fish are all doing fine and nothing is out of the ordinary. I also just dosed an ammonia detox from kent it also says it makes nitrates safe but i mean who knows. I am also on a time constraint as i am doing a 2 night event and may not even have the time as i will be mia in the next 2 hours

 

Nitrate is fine I've seen quite a few tanks that run well over 40 with no issues.

 

What critters do you have in there? The nitrates either way is fine, the ammonia, not so much.

 

2 damsels 1 cleaner shrimp 1 clown 1 Mandarin

 

Let me guess, testing with API? If so, I am willing to bet it is really 0. Very hard to tell the difference between 0 and 0.25. Get yourself a Seachem ammonia alert badge. They read as low as 0.02 PPM. You should not see any ammonia at all if there is livestock in the tank (or rather should not have livestock in the tank really).

 

Yup, yup.

Moved to ----- Chemistry.