Hello fams. A very good day to you! I’ve been reading most online forums about shrimp keeping and came across a topic on “Is water change necessary for shrimp tank?”. I think that this discussion is a very good one and I like to share my thoughts on this.

Many years ago, while traveling in Taiwan, i came across some breeders who don’t practise water change frequently. They would top up evaporated water and only do water change of about 10% once a month.

The reason for doing that? They want to keep the water parameter stabilised so that the shrimps will not lose it’s colour. At that time, i felt that this could be the easy way out of the hobby. No water change, easy maintenance and nice shrimps!

When i tried it out, things were great at start and about 3 months later, shrimps were dying when my parameters were right. After speaking to a few breeders locally and overseas about this, I came to realise that there is excessive unwanted minerals in my tanks.

What happens is that, when your tank water evaporates, the mineral content still stays in your tank. Without doing any water change, these minerals accumulate to a certain amount. Thus, measuring your TDS values, even if it is at the correct measurement, these minerals doesn’t actually benefit your shrimps.

Water change is still necessary to remove these unwanted minerals. Water change benefits your shrimps in several ways. Aside from removing unwanted minerals, it also instigate the shrimp to moult and breed. Water change acts like rain in the natural environment. When it rains, the water parameters in river changes, when this happens, shrimps will start to moult based on their natural instincts.

Moulting encourages your shrimps to grow and also breed. However, frequent moulting could cause the shrimp colour to fade and also shorten it’s lifespan. So how do we strike a good balance?

I always believe that gradual change works for shrimps. For my 54L tanks, I conduct water change of about 3L every week. That would equates to about 20% water change in a month. I have experimented with this and even until now, I have been sticking to this formula diligently. My shrimps do breed at a faster rate and also grow at a faster rate.

During water change, I adjust my new water TDS to about 70% of my tank value before adding them into my tank. Reason for doing that is because the soil still releases certain nutrients that will boost up the shortfall of 30%. All these are based on an estimate, but this is my practise of water change. You can change the levels according to your preference.

Using RODI filtration has several benefits. Firstly, you get total control of your water because what comes out of your filter is just pure water. I top it up with Aqualex gH conditioner to about TDS of 70 before adding them into my tanks. Another benefit is that while using water that has unknown minerals in it, you never know if those minerals are useful to your shrimps. I would strongly encourage you to get a RODI filter if you are into this hobby long term.

Water in your shrimp tank, is like the air that we breathe, so good control over your water parameters would be very important in this hobby. These are based on my years of observations and I feel that it works very well. If you have any questions, feel free to comment here or email me at hello@madshrimp.com