ammonia drop?

[arkman]

Is it posssible for my ammonia to drop without seeing a lift in nitaite?
I purchased a 4 month old tank and moved it into a new setup last night. I did a test after the setup and pH was low, and ammonia was at .3. I'm trying to avoid a big cycle as I have critters in this tank now that came with the setup (2 clowns, yellow tang, cleaner shrimp, tree coral and torch coral.)
So I went to the supermarket at midnight and got 20 gallons of RO water (dont think it was DI as they were selling it as drinking water, but it was superfiltered and UV - better than tap at $.39/gallon)
I did 2 five gal water changes after mixing, heating and aerating the water.
Ammonia dropped to .15 - ok, that shouldn't cook anyhting too badly...I hope.
This afternoon it read .10 - and no nitrite. I did add some buffer to help bringthe pH up, and it came up from 7.8 to 7.9.
I'll test again tomorrow - oh, and is this just a really, really bad idea? If I dont have a hard cycle in this tank now, am I going to have problems later? I was planning on doing ~10% water changes everytime the water quality got dangerous for the critters...

 

[dundar]

Did you take the water from the old setup? If you did, the water will have some bacteria in it and you shouldn't see a steep Ammiona spike or Nitrites spike. I would watch the ammiona closely and it should fall on its own even if the Nitrites don't rise quickly, your still cycling the tank slowly. You may see the Nitrates rise in less than week and that would indicate that the tank is cycling. I hope this helps.

 

[arkman]

Thanks Dundar, that does help. I took 20 gallons from the old setup, which was most of the open water.
What's is a dangerous level of ammona? am I right by doing a change when it gets above .2? or should I just watch the critters closely?
Everyone looks good except hte torch coral -I may bring it to my LFS for some credit.