Cycling my new tank

[Rosco's Reefs]

My first SW tank is up and running and starting to cycle. I was reading on Reef Central last and saw several references to doing MANY mini-water changes during this process. I have a 55g and they were advocating a 15-25% water change every day. Could this be true? I haven't seen this in any of the books I've read (skimmed, to tell the truth) and don't think I've seen it here.

 

Any advice is welcome. Thx

[Origami]

My first SW tank is up and running and starting to cycle. I was reading on Reef Central last and saw several references to doing MANY mini-water changes during this process. I have a 55g and they were advocating a 15-25% water change every day. Could this be true? I haven't seen this in any of the books I've read (skimmed, to tell the truth) and don't think I've seen it here.

 

Any advice is welcome. Thx

You've tied this to an old thread that's really not on this topic, so I'm going to split your post and this response and start a new thread.

 

There is benefit to many mini-water changes not only during cycling, but also during operation. This is most easily done using an automated system, though, that changes out something like 1% per day. Most people, however, still opt for weekly or biweekly water changes.

 

During cycling, if you're starting from scratch without higher life forms in the tank, you don't have to change the water at all, really. Just let the ammonia level peak and fall back to zero as the bacteria population develops. If, however, you have higher forms of life in the tank that may have come in on live rock, for example, you almost certainly want to keep the ammonia level from spiking up over 1 ppm and killing off these life forms, which would lead to increased ammonia levels.