I didn’t want my photos on this iPad. How do I free them up from my memory without deleting them from the cloud account? It’s a new iPad and I haven’t loaded any photos onto it. Why is it deciding to max out my memory with photos pulled from cloud.

Photos in iCloud is a synchronisation service. If Photos in iCloud is enabled, all your photos in iCloud will be copied to your iPad.

Set up and use iCloud Photos – Apple Support

You need to understand that Photos in iCloud is not an “archive” that is separate from your iPad. Photos added to you iPad are synchronised with iCloud and your other devices.

You can disable Photos in iCloud from iPad settings:

Settings > [Your Name / AppleID] > iCloud > Photos > iCloud Photos - set to OFF

This will ensure that photos are not synchronised with iCloud. If Photo’s have already been synchronised with your iPad, when setting to OFF, you will have the opportunity to keep a copy on your iPad - or delete the photos from your iPad that have been synchronised. If you wish to remove synchronised photos, do not choose the “keep” option.

Be aware that if you “keep” the photos synchronised from iCloud, and subsequently manually delete photos from your iPad - if you later re-enable Photos in iCloud, the deleted photos will also be deleted from iCloud!