Frequent Water Changes Bad For Shrimp?

HI alls,

I have a heavily planted 5 gallon tank stocked with ~20 bloody mary shrimp. I've been hearing mixed info on water changes. Initially, I was changing about one gallon of water every other day (half gallon in the am and half gallon in the pm), then a month ago I went on a seven day trip I didn't want to trouble my friend who was caring for my plants and animals with this extra hassel. When I returned, the shrimp seemed active and healthy, so I decided to cut back to one gallon a week. A week into this, a shrimp died. I then upped the water changes to two gallons a week, and another shrimp died the next week. Reading online, it sounds like frequent water changes are potentially disruptive to molting and breeding. I use RO water with minerals and the pH of introduced water is about 6.8, but temps can be different, depending on the temp of my room.

I've now gone back to the one gallon every other day because of the two deaths (I've only had the tank for two months), but maybe I'm doing more harm than good?

Temp: 73 degrees (I had it at 76 for a while, and then lowered in a week ago)
pH: 6.8
GH: 150 ppm
KH: 60 ppm

 

Here is a pic of the tank.

 

Water changes encourage molting, and frequent molting is difficult on shrimp. However, you do want to test your water and make sure your nitrates aren’t getting high. I suggest doing about 10% once a week unless the nitrate is getting above 10 ppm.

Truthfully, if your frequent water changing schedule was working before, then I see no need to change it unless you’d like to cut back on work.

 

Croseo welcome to fishlore Zindaginha HI first your perameters are fine for your shrimp, the problem you had was the water changes shrimp don like big changes and leaving them week then doing a gallon change is to much to fast that ss put your shrimp into shock with the results death, one of my tanks is the same size and I only change 15% a week which is 3ltr so you are s bit over the top with water changes, on the other hand if it was working for you then you can carry on with however if you want to lower the changes do it slowly until you get it where you want it others here do it different and from experience whatever you do at the end of the day they need stability that means keeping things regular and not to shock your shrimp please come back if your unsure of anything

 

Sorry Jellibeen been you posted as I was writing I'm glad we both said the same thing in a round about way

 

i've been doing water changes twice a week on my 5 gallon rcs tank, about 1-2 gallons each time. I should probably be cutting back because I have a lot of saddled shrimp but no eggs yet. but they poop so much!!! it's gross lol. i'm probably overfeeding but I don't want them to starve. :/

 

midnado you find you need to do that much to keep everything stable. This is out of interest only

 

midnado you find you need to do that much to keep everything stable. This is out of interest only

no, it's just what I do with all my other tanks to help keep algae down. I also have 3 male endlers in the tank but I'll be moving them to a different tank in about a month. I'll probably cut down to once a week.

 

Thanks, guys!

The two shrimp died on weeks when I cut back water changes, so they were dead before I changed the water. But maybe the shrimp died for some other reason. The main concern I have is the low activity level of the shrimp when I change water less...but I don't want to stress the shrimp or have them molting too much.

midnaI also have saddled shrimp but no eggs!

Jellibeen Yes, I haven't done a nitrate test in awhile (mostly because I change the water so frequently). I'll look to see what that tells me.