Community tank maintenance?

[derelict]

Hello everyone,

I've recently gotten into the hobby and have a community tank which was planned to be a
shrimp tank at first. Now I'm unsure, and after doing research, still very confused about the maintenance.
I've got a 70liter (~18gallons) tank scaped with plants, mosses, driftwood, floating plants, catappa leaves, cholla wood, catappa bark
and is being filtered through two seperate sponge filters capable of filtering 400l (105gallons) an hour that houses
~25 neocaridinas, 10 kubotai rasbora, 10 pygmy corys, 2 small plecos, (a super red and a clown) and 3 ramshorn snails.
Now so far so good except it's very confusing to me knowing what the correct frequency and volume of waterchanges should be.
When I did research for my initial shrimp tank I was reading alot of 10-20% every other week, however when I do research on fish
it appears to be more of a weekly thing. I hope anyone could enlighten me on what could be a good middle ground as to not
stress out my shrimp nor my fish.

Here are my parameters that have been stable for a while now:

pH: 7,5
kH: 7
gH: 10
NO2: 0,1
NO3: 4
NH4: 0,1

Thanks in advance!

[BrettD]

I think your tank is still cycling, based on the presence of Nitrite. In that case, it would definitely not be every other week for water changes yet. I'll let the more experienced people weigh in with details, but I would say it's normal for your water changes to be at least once a week for now. I have a couple questions I think others will ask. How long has the tank been running? Did you use any tank conditioners? Did you boil the wood and leaves?

[Scapexghost]

Do a water change when ammonia reaches .2 ppm, nitrite reaches .2 ppm, or nitrate reaches 40 ppm or if pH, gh, or kh drops significantly.

[derelict]

On 7/9/2022 at 6:08 PM, BrettD said:

I think your tank is still cycling, based on the presence of Nitrite. In that case, it would definitely not be every other week for water changes yet. I'll let the more experienced people weigh in with details, but I would say it's normal for your water changes to be at least once a week for now. I have a couple questions I think others will ask. How long has the tank been running? Did you use any tank conditioners? Did you boil the wood and leaves?

Hi! Thanks for your response. I'm not sure about the cycling although it sounds worrying, it was my understanding that a small amount of nitrites could be
in your tank in order for it to be turned into nitrates which are in turn removed by water change and plants but maybe I'm wrong? It's also in the safe range on
my drip test so I hadn't really considered it being an issue. As for your questions: The tank has been running for 2 months now and I use the seachem brand
for everything. Prime for conditioning and also stability. The wood and leaves are not boiled. They are bought from an aquascaping store though and the
person there told me that it would not be necessary so I went ahead and rinsed them with my aquariums water and put them in. I hope that was not a mistake then.
 

[BrettD]

On 7/9/2022 at 11:33 AM, derelict said:

Hi! Thanks for your response. I'm not sure about the cycling although it sounds worrying, it was my understanding that a small amount of nitrites could be
in your tank in order for it to be turned into nitrates which are in turn removed by water change and plants but maybe I'm wrong? It's also in the safe range on
my drip test so I hadn't really considered it being an issue. As for your questions: The tank has been running for 2 months now and I use the seachem brand
for everything. Prime for conditioning and also stability. The wood and leaves are not boiled. They are bought from an aquascaping store though and the
person there told me that it would not be necessary so I went ahead and rinsed them with my aquariums water and put them in. I hope that was not a mistake then.
 

No need to worry. You are correct about the small amount being safe and normal. I think I misunderstood. I thought that you had been doing frequent water changes to keep the water stable, so I assumed it was testing much higher than that before water changes. It's possible that it can be cycled and still need frequent water changes, but it depends on your bio-load. 

I don't know. I guess I never see the nitrites after my tank is cycled, but that could just be my test kit.

Edited July 9, 2022 by BrettD

[derelict]

On 7/9/2022 at 6:39 PM, BrettD said:

No need to worry. You are correct about the small amount being safe and normal. I think I misunderstood. I thought that you had been doing frequent water changes to keep the water stable, so I assumed it was testing much higher than that before water changes. It's possible that it can be cycled and still need frequent water changes, but it depends on your bio-load. 

I don't know. I guess I never see the nitrites after my tank is cycled, but that could just be my test kit.

No, my bad I should've specified; Right now I've been doing 20% a week because I figured it was safe.
I think I will try to go by Scapexghost's answer and see how I fare unless people have some other suggestions/comments.

 

On 7/9/2022 at 6:32 PM, Scapexghost said:

Do a water change when ammonia reaches .2 ppm, nitrite reaches .2 ppm, or nitrate reaches 40 ppm or if pH, gh, or kh drops significantly.

Thank you! And this is for sure not stressful on any habitants because maybe it'd be too often or too delayed or something, right? Because
this way would make it easier as I can just test until the parameters hit the values you listed and be sure a water change is in order.

[Scapexghost]

On 7/9/2022 at 11:03 AM, derelict said:

Thank you! And this is for sure not stressful on any habitants because maybe it'd be too often or too delayed or something, right? Because
this way would make it easier as I can just test until the parameters hit the values you listed and be sure a water change is in order.

Yes

[Flumpweesel]

This is quite a useful way of learning your tanks rhythm. 

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/water-changes

[derelict]

On 7/9/2022 at 8:05 PM, Flumpweesel said:

This is quite a useful way of learning your tanks rhythm. 

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/water-changes

Hi! Thank you, however this brings me back to the whole thing I read about shrimp not liking often and big volume water changes, this would have me changing 40%
water a week in a balanced aquarium and in that way contradict everything I read about what shrimp like, no?

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/9/2022 at 8:46 AM, derelict said:

Now so far so good except it's very confusing to me knowing what the correct frequency and volume of waterchanges should be.

AQ advisor is a really good tool you can put in your parameters and get a good "schedule" for how often to change water and how much.

Whether you do it weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, it's entirely up to you and how the tank is doing.

As an example, this is my maintenance schedule:

• Weekly: gravel vac, clean hang on back filter, dose fertilizer, check fish, top off water
• Daily: feed, check fish, check plants, check equipment
• Optional: midweek dose fertilizer again (depends on the test results and plants visual inspection)
• When I gravel vac weekly I will check the test results and decide if I need to change water. Typically this is done weekly, but I could easily do this bi-weekly.  When I do change water I change 50%.

I don't know if this helps, but I felt like it's a good video to share with you.
 

 

 

On 7/9/2022 at 11:05 AM, Flumpweesel said:

This is quite a useful way of learning your tanks rhythm. 

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/water-changes

Absolutely agreed.  I linked the video above where Irene walks through this process ^^ 🙂

[Patrick_G]

Shrimp don’t have a high bioload and they generally like stable water parameters so many shrimp keepers keep the water changes to a minimum. Many keepers use a TDS meter in addition to monitoring other parameters. That measures everything that’s building up in the water and help you decide if it’s time for a water change.  A small change every few weeks is often all that’s necessary. That’s the general rule of thumb, but there are exceptions. Some folks are so successful at breeding shrimp that it’s doesn’t matter how much water they change, their shrimp thrive and breed. 
 

Since you have fish in the tank you’ll most likely follow the regular rules of thumb for changing water: change when Nitrates get above a certain point like 40 or 50ppm. 

[Flumpweesel]

Well to avoid having to do large water changes you can do smaller ones more frequently as it won't reduce the nitrates as much. 

I'm not sure how sensitive shrimp are to large water changes but making sure the water temp is equal and oxygenation is good in the new water should help mitigate your risk but again I can't say is it's really necessary