Commonly you will heard it stated that water changes during the initial cycling process will prolong its length and even reduce the filtering capacity of the bacterial filter at the conclusion. This is not the case, water changes will have a negligable impact on the length of the intial cycling process.

The usual reason quoted for water changes slowing down the cycling process is that it removes the food required by the bacteria to multiply and grow. However, it doesn't matter what the concentration of nutrients are during the initial cycling process. What is important is what will be there after that, when things have settled down, livestock is added and the system is being fed. That is what the bacterial population needs to be suitable to process. Therefore the huge influx that occurs when there are dying organisms on the new liverock, this is ultimately not the nutrient load that the filter needs to handle.

Plus, the manner in which bacteria reproduce, with division into two new cells, then the time difference between producing the number of bactiera needed to process say 100 units to 10 is just over three generations. And a single generation can be of as low as hours. But even if it is a day, then once the bacteria have ramped up reproduction it does not take long to get the right number present.

If you have the ability to do so, then do as many large percentage water changes during the cycling process as you can. At least weekly, more so if it is possible. And it needs to be in the order of 50% or more of the system total volume changed, that way it actually makes a significant difference to the concentration of the various species in the water. 10-20% does not do a whole lot and at this stage keeping the water parameters in line as much as possible is the goal, hopefully helping to allow more life on the liverock to survive. For example, if the water has 5 ppm of ammonia in it, then a 10% water change will reduce the concentration to only 4.5 ppm, an insignificant change. Whereas, 50% will reduced the ammonia level to 2.5 ppm.

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