to water change or not to water change?

[Beloufish]

Hi,
our 12 gallon nano has been set up since 1/9/2010. We have 12.5lbs of live rock and added our CUC 14 days ago and are finally seeing a small spike in ammonia (0.50 ppm) but nitrites (0 ppm) and nitrates (5-10 ppm) are the same as always. We have 5 scarlett hermits and 3 margarita snails.

Should we do a water change yet? If yes, how much? If no, when?

Thanks!
Ashley

[bertoni]

I would do a change now. It's best to avoid exposing animals to ammonia at all. I might do 2-3 20% changes, up to two per day, although those animals are fairly cheap and hopefully comparatively hardy. Some Amquel or Prime might help.

[Pufferpunk]

You NEVER want to see any ammonia in a tank.

[Korrine]

Water changes are like taking a breath of fresh air to us. Give'em some good clean water :thumbsup:

[iamwrasseman]

yup give them some water changes and it will never hurt and 20% is perfect .

[wooden_reefer]

Hi,
our 12 gallon nano has been set up since 1/9/2010. We have 12.5lbs of live rock and added our CUC 14 days ago and are finally seeing a small spike in ammonia (0.50 ppm) but nitrites (0 ppm) and nitrates (5-10 ppm) are the same as always. We have 5 scarlett hermits and 3 margarita snails.

Should we do a water change yet? If yes, how much? If no, when?

Thanks!
Ashley

You got it backward. You should never have livestock before a medium is cycled.

This is now 2010, you never never need to use the ammonia from death of or excretion from livestock to get the ammonia for cycling. If you consider hitchhikers on LR as livestock, you should have cycled the medium first

It is needly waste of effort to do water change during a cycle; and when you remove ammonia during cycling thru WC, you also decrease the robustness of the cycle.

Now, I say you do not change water until the ammonia level exceeds 1 ppm and let the CUC to their fate. The livestock that comes later is more important.

[iamwrasseman]

i agree and also apologize i didn't take into consideration the age of the tank

[lordofthereef]

It sounds like you didn't have any sort of cycle before this? Where did you get the live rock? There should have been some sort of cycle if it wasn't cured. If it was cured you really shouldn't be seeing any ammonia at all currently.