it totally depends clean up wise you wont see a ton of difference but in a small tank, when and if things go wrong you have much less time to find it amd get it under control
Why do you believe this, can you give some examples? Which things can go wrong?
I think where many of us digress is what the OP meant by easier.
Good point, the OPs original question, at least how I interpreted it was more about ease of maintenance than ease of maintaining stable water parameters.
Also, if someone else is feeding my fish I premeasure everything into weekly pill boxes. Best of luck!
I do the same thing! The only way I have found that keeps other from overfeeding the fish.
Honestly, I cannot speak for anyone else but I am not arguing just to be a troll or because I am mad about what someone said. I am doing it because I believe that there are an unreasonably large number of fish keeping myths out there and that it is important to question things that don't make sense or I don't yet understand the reasoning for. I have made the same statement about smaller tanks that I am now arguing against many times over the years. However, after thinking about it, I no longer believe it to be true. I am legitimately trying to be educated here and would gladly change my opinion if facts came to light to support it.
The problem I have in this particular case is that the primary counter arguments seem to be that it is true because many people say it is true or people have read that it is true. IMO, this is not a meaningful reason.
The primary thing that is being stated is that "parameters" either are difficult to maintain or swing too fast in smaller tanks. So, here is my reasoning for why I think this is mostly a myth. Here are the parameters that I typically track in a freshwater aquarium.
Ammonia - It should be 0 in a cycled aquarium regardless of size.
Nitrite - It should be 0 in a cycled aquarium regardless of size.
Nitrate - The nitrate growth rate is almost entirely based on stocking levels regardless of tank size.
GH - I cannot think of any reason why GH management would be different in a small tank. The only possible reason would be if you were dosing additives to alter GH. However, given the quantity that GH additives are dosed I don't think this would be an issue even a 10g tank.
Temperature - The rate at which temperature changes due to external factors varies pretty greatly with aquarium shape and thickness. The thicker glass present in large tanks can help serve as an insulator. However, since most people use heaters with built in thermostats I really have never seen this as a practical issue. The one exception to this I might bring up is very small aquariums where a standard heater will not fit inside them. But now we are getting in the ~2g tank range.
KH - See GH above. I believe the same rationale holds true.
pH - pH is the one place I can see that there could be an legitimate difficulty in keeping smaller tanks. However, this would only be in situations where you are dosing chemicals to maintain very low pH and KH. That being said, I don't think this is a very common situation. In more typical situations as long as your bio-load/stocking level is appropriate you should not have any more or less issues than with larger tanks.
Now if we switch away from stable water parameters for a minute and start talking about maintenance, it is definitely more work to maintain bigger tanks. Especially when the size difference becomes extreme. For example, maintaining a 10g tank and a 20g tank is pretty much the same effort. But comparing the 10g to a 200g is a lot different. It is partially because of the water volume difference but the bigger issue by far is that it gets hard to reach things in taller tanks.
Now, the real issue I have see smaller tanks is that people tend to overstock them more. Either because the fish they want are too big or they decide to put too many in there. When people ask me what the ideal size first tank is I almost always point them to the standard 75g. It just presents the widest variety of stocking options at a reasonable cost.
These opinions form the basis for my above statements. I hope that it at least helps clarify *why* I am making the statements I am making.
I would love to hear the counter arguments and have a civil discussion on the topic.