Can I and should I do my first water change now?

[mmync]

OK I started the cycle on my 180 gallon about 3 weeks ago with 4 cocktail shrimp. I have been cycling it with about 230lbs of already cured live rock 40 pounds of carib-sea live sand and 80 pounds of carib-sea not live sand. My ammonia spiked about 2 weeks ago and has been at 0.0 for the last 2 weeks. Here are my test numbers and they have been the same for atleast the last week to week and a half.
Ammonia - 0.0
Nitrites - 0.0
Nitrates - 5
PH - 8.0
I have had a small percula clown in there for about a week and a coral beauty in there for about 4 days and they both seem to be doing good.

 

[thomas712]

Wow has it been three weeks already? Are you having any algea blooms yet? If not then with numbers like that I do not see any reason for a water change. I on the other hand I have to do a 50% water change, you see I did not take the shrimp out and he drove my nitrites and nitrates completly off the charts I/ve never seen my test kits so in the red, so tomorrow I will change some water.
Sounds like your doing fine.
Might want to see where your Calcium and Alkalinity are.
Thomas

 

[wamp]

If your rock was cured, you should not have seen much of a spike at all.
But, since your spike has come and gone, I would do a small water change and SLOWLY start adding livestock...
Good Luck!

 

[mmync]

No algea blooms at all, but I havent had any really powerfull lights on there yet either just 1 n.o. 48" 10,000k, 1 n.o. 48" actinic and 2 n.o. 18" 18,000k's