In order to keep your fish tank water pristine for your Neocaridina Shrimps, you may need to occasionally swap out the old water. So, how often should you perform a water change for your Cherry Shrimp tank? You can find out in this guide at Aquarium Blueprints.
Ideal Water Parameters
Cherry Shrimps, as well as the fish and any other inhabitants in your tank, will produce organic wastes, which will eventually decompose into ammonia.
The beneficial bacteria in your aquarium will help convert ammonia to nitrites and then nitrites to nitrates. If you have a really deep substrate and/or using a special filter media like Seachem Matrix, then you will also be able to build up a bacterial colony that will remove nitrates in your shrimp tank.
Ideally, you should have 0 ppm of ammonia, 0 ppm of nitrites and less than 20 ppm of nitrates when it comes to the Neocaridina species. Cherries are extremely vulnerable to any sort of ammonia and nitrite spikes. If you let your nitrate levels get too high, then they will also experience some health issues.
A water change is a quick and effective way to lower the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels in your aquarium.
Precautions
With that said, you don’t want to change out the water too often. This is because the Cherry Shrimps prefer stable water parameters.
So, if you change the water too frequently, then you may end up stressing your pet inverts out, causing them to molt prematurely. In some extreme cases, your shrimps may have a hard time shedding their molt and may perish during the process.
How often should you change water for Cherry Shrimps?
So, how often should you swap out the water for in Cherry Shrimp tank? The answer depends on how your tank is set up.
In our case, we have a tank that only contains Red Cherry Shrimps and Ramshorn Snails. This aquarium has a deep substrate and is heavily planted. As a result, the water parameters constantly stay at 0 ppm of ammonia, 0 ppm of nitrites and less than 20 ppm of nitrates.
For our tank, we would do a small water change, usually 10%, every month. If the water line gets too low before our monthly water change is due, then we would simply top off the missing water.
For your aquarium, we recommend that you test your tank water before thinking about doing a water change. If the water parameters are fine, then you don’t have to swap out the water.
If you have a low bioload, deep substrate and plenty of live plants, then you can follow our monthly water change strategy. We don’t recommend going over 10% when it comes to water changes as the big swings in parameters will cause a lot of stress to your inverts.
