I did water changes during cycling and my diatoms were not that bad.

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it's not the diatoms i'm worried about :lol: its throwing back my cycling period
with a big water change, thats not productive @ all

dont do a big water change just 10% a week

ya about 5-10% weekly is what is recommended anything more than that will just set you back in your cycle and you biolagical load.

Water changes doesn't prolong the cycle. Every batch of live rock i have cured, I have done a 50% water change daily right from day 1 and i kept it up for as long as i was registering ammonia levels (approx 5 days). My theory is the bacteria are already present on the rock, the trick is to keep as many animals in the rock alive as I can and that means keeping the ammonia levels down. The longest it has taken for my nitrates to drop down below 10ppm was 3 weeks.

THANKS for that Marie...it was an interesting read and really simple for the new reefer........

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-ya my nitrites are goin down after a week and doesn't look like i'm gonna get
an ammonia spike @ all so another couple weeks and i'll add some hardy fish maybe-

bv_ reefer do a large water change at least 20%, it won't wreck your cycle and it will help keep the inevitable algae outbreak to a minimum especially if you have been running without a skimmer. Just make sure the salinity of the make up water is the same as the tank



*EDIT* oh and hold off on adding fish for as long as you can, there are some really neat critters that come in the live rock that you may never see if there are fish in there. For me the hobby is all about the microfauna :lol:

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-it's true all sorts of little mushrooms and feather dusters and snails are alredy
starting 2 pop out everywhere :mrgreen: ......and an aiptasia:twised: but whatever i'm gettin' 10x more good stuff than bad stuff so what eva...5 chromis shud be enuf 2 watch for another month anyways, always schooling and chasing each
other lol

Here is a link to help you identify everything

http://www.melevsreef.com/id/