Time for a water change???

Hey Everyone,

Have a question I was hoping I could get your thoughts on.

Background:

I have a 120 gallon Reef tank that I set up in early October. I used 40 lbs of rock from my Red Sea Max that was up and running for about a year and added another 60 lbs of cured rock on top of that. The tank ran for about 3 weeks with only rock and sand. At the end of the 3 weeks the nitrates moved up a very little bit and then back down.. At that point I started to migrate my livestock from my red sea tank over to the 120 and have also added a Naso and a Hippo. (see signature for details)

Now for my question-- I keep a pretty close eye on my parameters and to date everything has remained at 0 with Calcium being around 480. and the Alk being somewhere around 2 - 2.8 (my test kit is terrible for this test) When I checked my parameters this week here is what I got.

Alk - 2-2.8
PH - 8.4
Nitrite - 0
Ammonia - 0
Nitrates - 10
Salinity 1.024

Given the above background and the birthday of the tank should I do a water change given my Nitrates are at 10? On my Red Sea tank as soon as I saw Nitrates at all I did a change. However with the 120 I just want to make sure I don't mess things up by doing a change prematurely as things have been going really well..

Thanks for your help!

 

I usually start tanks with base rock and never test for anything but Ca, MG, dKH because all the others will happen with time so I don't waste money on the test. If it was me I would wait until about week 11 to 13 before you do a water change. You have a large bio load on a new tank, make sure you slow down until the tank is more mature.

 

Thanks Otty-- Yeah I was really confused/taken back by my cycle.. The thing got a little bit of brown algae.. almost like a dusting then cleared up. That was all I saw. Other then in my dragster I'm all about going slow and I haven't added anything in a few weeks for that reason.. Just wanted to make sure that with the nitrates being at 10 that I was ok. Is there a level that I should not let them go above?

 

When first cycling my 36 I ran into alot of spikes in nitrate and nitrites. Adding a comperison of rock it took about 2 months to cycle. Inthat time I had brown alge spikes and other spikes too. I didn't however change any water untill my paramaters levaled out. I also found paramaters levaled at zero and water changes were just removing what I couldn't test for.

 

See that you guys are rubbing off on me.. Before too long it will actually sound like I know what I'm talking about!!!

 

Your Tank whether it's cycled or not has coral and fish in it. You should now treat it as if it is cycled 100%. With 10 Nitrates your not in any trouble. But I would begin treating your tank as if it is cycled. (because the coral and fish are using the trace elements) this means performing water changes as needed like 10% bi monthly

J

 

Yeah I figured at the end of the month it will be about 12 weeks so I'll do a change then. Unitl then I'll sti back and enjoy the view! Thanks for the input!

 

Your alkalinity is low. A water change will help that a bit, but you may need to buffer depending on what you have in there. EDIT - OOps new tank... just keep it in mind for down the road..

 

Thanks Matt! will def keep that in mind!