New tank questions- First water change, lighting photoperiod, feeding...

Our tank is now 3 weeks and a day old...we cycled with "cured" LR from our LFS. We saw faint spikes in ammonia and nitrite, and now have some nitrates/phosphates. We have a continuous monitoring system in place so you can see the current conditions in our reef below. We've been running 50% of our lights (which=3.6W/g) and have gradually increased to our current reduced photoperiod (6 hrs.). Our tank appears to be coming along nicely- new coralline growing and some other red/green algae (no real bad stuff), pod population increasing, worms (and feather dusters) emerging, etc. We still have certain areas of the rock with white coralline die-off and our first diatom bloom has almost come and gone (still on one rock). We've prepared ~25% saltwater for our first partial water change.

So while our first cycle seems to be complete, the tank still has quite a bunch of maturing to do. Can we hold-off on a water change for a few more weeks? Some people say you can wait until nitrates eventually zero out too (but sometimes this is a few weeks, others report a few months!)...is there an added benefit to doing this (seems like an awfully long time without any water change)?

Also, we haven't introduced any food into our tank yet...can the life we mentioned above continue to live off what is growing out of our rock (some people mentioned VERY small feeding every other day, some say nothing is needed).

Any advice on our timing- how long we should run this way, when we should perform our first water change (and %), when we should introduce our first few snails, when we should introduce food, etc. would be very much appreciated.

Thank you guys!
Amanda & Matthew

 

You can introduce your clean up crew now. Your params are in a good place. You could go ahead and slowly and cautiously add other creatures to your piece of ocean. A water change won't hurt anything, the number of bacteria in the water column as opposed to the rock is minimal. Watch your po4 you might want to start consider using granulated ferric oxide soon to keep it under control if you plan to add SPS corals.