Pros and cons of 10% wc on alternate days for planted tank?

[Cyberkinetic]

Just wondering instead of weekly 30/40% wc for my 10 gallon planted tank, which i have a phobia since i might have shocked my corys into developing some fungus infecton..
Would a 10% every other day be better or worse?
Does too frequent abeit small amount of wc do any damage to my setup? Or is it more preferred?
I dun mind the effort (for now).. it's just a couple of scoops and replacement from my pail of water treated with Seachem Safe. One pail more than enough for a week's wc and top up from evaporation.

[griffinkid]

Yes. Small volume water change on a daily basis will definitely improve water quality. However, when dosing the dechlorinator, you need to be precise with the required volume as accumulation of excess dechlorinator will have a detrimental effect to the fishes' well being.

[Cyberkinetic]

Just some observations so far..since doing the partial 10% water change for a week, and stopped the Flourish Excel and Flourish dosing (as I've just introduced the yamato and malayan shrimps, worried if it will affect them), I realize my plants seemed to have stopped withering away, well, the staurogyne are all gone and left one stub which seemed to be surviving. The rest of the plants are are doing great...even the hair grass are not turning yellow and melting away like before.
As there's a few variables ... frequent small amount water change, stopping ferts and carbon additive... Can't confirm what is the single item which created the improvement yet.

[Loudness]

previously i have bad water quality, even have purple algae. shrimps all very shy, hiding at 1 corner. then, i did 2 days of 10% water change, using dip method to dip the water in, the water quality improve greatly. now shrimps are more active.

i think it's always better to have more small amount of water change is better than 1 time huge quantity. but don't do it too often, maybe just 2 or 3 times a week. if not i'm afraid there may be too little no3 for your plant to take in. plus too many water change and too fast water change may stress your fish or shrimps too, means everyday they need to try to get used to new water parameters, unless you are about to get the same water parameters everytime you do a water change.

[VSGenesis]

Depends which you value more. Plants or fauna. If you are doing EI then yes, 40-50% water change. All plants need CO2; its whether how much the plants demands it. Flourish contains Copper right? Might cause problem to your shrimp. Excel tend to make the shrimp look lethargic and not its active self. Anyway, Yamato and Malayan are pretty hardy as compared to their more expensive cousins. I have mine and I use Profito and Excel before but in less dose. Fauna are okay and plants are growing.

Oh ya staurogyne. Keep that stub. When I was starting months ago, all the leaves withered. 50% of them did. I'm not sure what I did or perhaps happen naturally (not an expert here) but it grew back. One of the stalk with leaves which I left on the surface was push by my hof and it got stuck to the driftwood. And guess what, roots sprout and it went right to the bottom where the soil are. growing like wildfire.

I think overall, just keep doing and adjust. You'll find a balance and it'll not be the same as the next guy.

[Cyberkinetic]

I've stopped dosing Excel for various reasons, partly the shrimps and also as I had an issue with some white growth on my platys, I was dosing the tank with Paraguard. Too many chemicals one time just doesn't seemed to make me feel comfortable. Haven't seen much effects when I was dosing Excel and stopped now, I think I will not resume it for now.

I just dosed a half dosage of Flourish today as I stopped Paraguard treatment since my platys have recovered. So far so good it seems, a good few hours after dosing it, no adverse reaction from the shrimps. I read somewhere that the copper in Flourish is of very minute amount which shouldn't affect the shrimps too much(not sure how true though). I'm just mindful that with the frequent water changes, there may not be sufficient nutrients in the water for the plants. So if the next couple of days that my fishes and shrimps are ok, I think I will still do the weekly dose of Flourish to see how it goes. Probably 50% dose as well for the time being.

As for the stub of Staurogyne, I did kept it there, had two actually(one stub hidden from view previously), one seemed ok still, bare without leaves but when I touch it with the tongs, it seemed still solid, as for the other, there's nothing left, it turned into a mushy mess as the others. Seriously suspect that it's got to do with my water being too acidic. However as I am doing daily water change now, the acidity should be better controlled although I've not done a test (lazy to be honest, it's just a lot of work and with my kid around most of the time, this prove to be more challenging than it seemed).

I was replanting the stems(they seemed to be growing out of control) which I trimmed off but finally ran out of space this time to plant. 90-95% of my tank ground surface is planted, left little bits along the sides where I am not doing any planting since they have become shrimp feeding locations. Left about ten stalks which I just conveniently planted it on my smaller 10L tank. But it's just plan gravel, I'm not hopeful they will survive. i think in 2 weeks' time, when they grow as expected, i'll probably have to give them away.

Noticed the yamato shrimps seemed to be much bigger as well since getting them a few weeks ago. They are hard to spot until recently so I more or less remembered them for the size when I bought them, they are definitely bigger.

Anyway, just got to do with whatever works I suppose. haha...