Water Change- Yay or Nay?

[hannernanner]

Happy Friday everyone! I have been cycling my new tank for a few weeks now, and I have always read that it is best practice to do a big water change after cycling but before adding your first livestock. I'm questioning whether I need to do that at this point (planning on first fish this weekend), you'll see why below.

I started the tank with the refugium starter kit from Algae Barn, which included the Fritz Turbo Start 900. I realize some have said I shouldn't have been running a fuge in a brand new tank, but I've been dosing phyto daily and adding a small pinch of freeze dried shrimp every few days and the macro and pods seem to be very happy. Let's compare the parameters I tested one week ago to the ones I did just today:

A week ago:
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate ~25ppm
Phosphate less than 0.01ppm

Today:
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5ppm
Phosphate .05ppm

It seems like the macro is doing a good job exporting nutrients, and all other parameters stable, do I need a water change before adding fish? The phosphates did go up a bit, because last week I was worried they'd bottom out so I added some flakes. Not trying to skip steps here, just genuinely curious. Thanks in advance!

 

[DED65]

Yay. After a few weeks without a water change, I would go ahead and make a water change. It will be a good habit to start making water changes at least every 2 weeks, even better is every week. Not only are you removing whatever build up, you are also replacing trace elements.

 

[Twoddler]

I realy don,t see the need to change water, no live stock, no coral nitrate 0.05. What's the point throwing money away on salt when no need, this hobby is expensive enough. Different story when stocked though.

 

[vetteguy53081]

If in doubt. . . change it out. I rarely change water and tanks doing just fine