Shrimp filter question

[starsman20]

I have decided that the hob on my shrimp tank causes more flow than I would like. I've unplugged it and just left the medium sponge filter going. The hob has some ceramic in it for bio. Should i drop tbat bag into the tank or just leave it and let the sponge do its thing. There has been both the sponge and the hob on for about 5 months. Only thing in tbe tank are about 15 cherry shrimp and some snails.

[FriendlyLoach]

I think if you put the bio ceramic in the tank, it will die, they need flow. Or at least a lot will die. The sponge should be enough to handle the waste. 

[CT_]

It takes very little to take care of the nitrogen from a dozen shrimp and some snails.  You could probably take both out a just the substrate would have enough bacteria for you.  dropping the bio ceramic in would probably cause some of the bacteria to die back but it would end up similar to your substrate in terms of how much bacteria it grows.  There's no harm in doing it but probably no benefit.

[tolstoy21]

@starsman20 If your tank has been running for a while now and has rocks and substrate and plants, etc., you don’t need a filter, except in terms of mechanical filtration to pull particulate out of the water. But you might not even need that.

I have found with my caridina shrimp I got rid of my hob for the same reason, too much flow in one side of the tank.  That and it battered my floating plants.

After that I ran only an air stone to give the tank some circulation. I found that the shrimp were pretty good at keeping the tanks free of debris in their own and everything my hob was doing wasn’t even needed. The shrimp seemed to appreciate the air stone and went for rides in the upstream of bubbles. It’s hard to imagine they weren’t experiencing ‘fun’.

Any time I thought the water looked a tad cloudy, I’d just do a 25-30% water change.

That being said, a sponge filter will work great as a replacement for a hob in  a shrimp tank as the shrimp will graze on anything that the sponge filter collects on its surface. This is what I currently run for filtration.  But I did run in just an air stone for half a year without issue. 

Edited February 13, 2021 by tolstoy21