When To Clean

Hi!
I have 7 baby guppies, a 3in common pleco (yes he will be in a bigger tank when it’s time), 6 ghost shrimp and 1 female Betta. 20 gallon tank.
I have been gravel vac/water changing 25% twice a week and then someone said that’s too much?
I feel like a fish tank cycle is the most complicated, fragile science experiment that could potentially kill my gilldren if I mess it up, gosh clean to much, clean to little, ahhhh helpppp lol
Btw my water is testing perfectly-just wondering if I really am cleaning toooo much?
Thanks

 

Honestly I don't think you could clean too much or too often, you could have a constant flow in and out of the tank if you wanted. The key is consistency since your bacteria will grow to whatever is needed for the amount of waist. Since your doing twice a week your removing a good amount of waist before its processed so if you would go to say every other week you wouldn't have enough bacteria to process all the waste and your fish would suffer.

 

I would do 1/3 once a week

 

Are you cycled already?
Your not stocked to heavily so you could scale back to once a week or every other week long as levels stay good

 

25% twice a week is fine

 

I usually do 50% water changes on all my tanks once a week. It's pretty hard to do water changes too often/too much IMO. Either way you are removing unwanted contaminants through water changes and diluting what you don't remove. Your tank sounds lightly stocked so really once a week should be enough in your case.

 

It depends....If your tank is cycled, meaning your readings are consistently 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites and some nitrates then normally once a week is enough. If your nitrates are going above 30 in just 2 or 3 days then water changes are necessary to lower them. Your nitrate test should let you know if you need to do a water change more often than once a week.

If your tank is not yet cycled and you are doing a fish in cycle then every other day or even every day isn't too much. You do need to allow some ammonia to remain to feed the cycle but if it gets up to 1 on the tests and you are using prime to neutralize it you need to do a water change to lower it below 1.

As you can see, the answer isn't black and white.

 

You could probably go to once a week 25-30% with your current stock and be fine, unless you REALLY enjoy vacuuming and changing water I guess? (Some do).