Large Water Changes with Inverts

[TriggersAmuck]

Anyone do regular large (like > 70%) water changes while having shrimp or other sensitive inverts? I change roughly 80% of my water every week (to avoid dosing and to actually keep NO3 and PO4 completely suppressed) with a tank load of anemones with no problems, but I'm curious whether I will run into troubles with shrimps if I were to do the same? Of course I go to some lengths to match salinity (measuring with a scale to maintain consistency) and temperature, but considering it only takes about two to three minutes to pump the 10 gallons into my 14 gallon cube (with about 12 gallons of water volume) I could imagine this could shock and kill a wee tiny shrimp.

 

[Spare time]

It will be more stressful to everything in the tank but shouldn't kill things if the water matches the salinity and temperature of the tank.


PS Nitrate and phosphate are needed and you risk a massive dino outbreak or cyano if you have 0 and 0 (not sure if that is what you have but 80% a week seems like a lot unless you feed heavily). Also, doing a water change to avoid dosing is ok but extremely costly compared to dosing over time.

 

[ichthyogeek]

In my opinion, if the anemones can handle it, then shrimp can probably handle it.

 

[Clownfishy]

Have you thought about dosing the same volume over the week via an auto water change? That is quite a high percentage but at least over a week it spreads it out and more importantly, would avoid the swings in water chemistry at a single point in time?