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Cycling with livestock, should I do water changes?


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So 4 weeks ago, I replaced all my old rock with new cooked LR. I had my live stock (clown, goby, small CUC) sitting in another tank while I waited for a cycle. Didn't appear to be having one so after 5-6 days I put the livestock back. I thought it was normal because I used cooked rock. Here is where I went wrong. Some guy offered to trade me a bunch of corals for my old rock, which I did not want anymore anyway. I didn't want to add this much to my tank at once but it was such a good deal I had to take it. FFWD 2 weeks and it looks like my tank is starting to cycle. Since I have all the livestock in there, including new corals...I was hoping to start doing water changes to minimize stress from the ammonia on the fish. Is this a good idea? I haven't been testing but I plan on doing so tomorrow morning to see where I am at. What do you guys think I should do?

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Your kinda at a catch 22. In order for the bacteria colones to grow to a size that can support your tank, you need to feed it. The first strain needs ammonia for food, so if you are doing things to remove the ammonia from the tank then you are essentially starving the bacteria. So that's the catch 22. Leaving it alone may kill live stock, but removing it you may never get the tank to were it needs to be. Doing massive water changes will also add a lot of stress to the live stock and that can cause problems as well. I would do frequent small water changes and constantly test the ammonia levels. To solve i would order the bacteria in the bottle and add that or you could try a little more established live rock.

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Large water changes to little to no stress to live stock if you properly match the SG and Temp of the water. Stress occurs when you don't match those conditions.

I would strongly disagree with you. You will never perfectly match salinity and temp. Besides that you need ammonia for the bacteria to grow. Besides he has not posted what the Ammonia levels even are. with out that its kinda hard to say how to proceed.

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