Testing instance and wiping data

I am wanting to test things and contribute back to lemmy's codebase, and to do that I want to run an instance

I have had no issue setting up an instance, but I want to make sure the things I test / change are not going to cause issues for the fediverse

For example, if I federate a remote instance and then wipe my DB (while keeping the same URL), will that other instance be able to handle the change?

Is there a best practice for this that I should follow?