Water changes during fishless cycling to moderate nitrates?

[peterS]

We're in the midst of cycling our new 123L saltwater tank for the first time. We're in the "ammonia cycling nicely but nitrites not yet". After dosing with ammonia chloride, ammonia will all be gone again in 24hrs. Nitrites are still high, but we know they're getting processed because nitrates are getting really high - over 50. I guess partly as a consequence, we're now starting to grow some algae - nothing to bad so far. There's no fish yet of course, so we changed 25% of the water last week to get the nitrates down a bit, but they're back up again. So, the question is - should we be changing some of the water more regularly to keep the nitrates in check (partly to stop the algae taking over) or does that risk unbalancing things and should we just wait for the tank to be cycled and then do a major water change at the end?

 

[seangee]

Without fish there is no need. But there is also no harm if the nitrates are causing you problems. Do you have plants in the tank? If not you could just turn off the lights.

 

[peterS]

Thanks Sean - got to love the practical advice There's no plants in it yet - we wanted to keep it as simple as possible through the cycling period and then build up very gradually. Patience is a problem, but we're sticking with it. So, off the lights go.... We'll likely do occasional maybe 10l changes just to try and keep things in check, but just waiting for the nitrites to start dropping.