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When I introduce new shrimp they are usually very active. If acclimatisation was done right there should be nothing to stress them.

I can see a coupe of potencial issues. 1. Heavy plants tank with demanding plants. Unless you have a fert Rich soil like Ada amazonia you have to dose something to keep the plants growing. Excess nutrients will have bad effect on shrimp as their deficiency has. The key is to keep things balanced which is why most keep shrimp with simple undemanding plants and mosses. You May think you are not killing them with ferts but how can you be sure? 2 you have a huge rock - are you 100% sure it is inert? Most rock will leech minerals to water which can be hazardous for shrimp. 3. You never know whats inside your tap water and in tap there is plenty already. I understand that you love how your tank looks and you would hate to change it. So my advice is to either try with more hardy shrimp like neo's or do another shrimp specific tank the right way - ro+minerals+trace for shrimp and possibly a shrimp soil if you want caridinas.

Two things you need to account for. What is your NO3? If very high small ones might not make it. The other one - how do you remineralize? All living things inclusive plants consume nutrients and the water may lack some trace elements which the shrimp need. Some plants tend to consume more nutrients than others and it may leave the water barren. No Way to tell for sure other than dose some trace and check if the situation is improving over time.

If your pH buffers 6.5 and below the substrate is usually fine unless the pH is due to co2. With shrimp the problem is that they need a balance of micro elements. Too little and you will have issues. To much and you will also have issues. The issue is that plants thrive when there are more nutrients than what is optimal for shrimp, unless you just have mosses and some really hardy plants. Now if the substrate is old it can get inert(no more pH buffer) but it also can leech some stuff back into the water which is bad.

I'm using RO water, so no NO3 there. I also have two other tanks and while NO3 also rises noticeably, it is not as fast as in this one so I'm really puzzled. Since i dont really have time to do such frequent water changes I just added purigen and the NO3 stays at 10 or below before i do WC.

I actually cleaned the substrate and rescaped the tank all over again and it hardly changed anything. The substrate is clean now and the NO3 still goes to over 10 really quick.

So a lot of shrimp keepers prepare and cycle a completely new tank when their old active substrate is loosing its properties. But is it really necessary ? Can't you just drain the whole water from the tank, keep your filter media submerged in the drained water, replace the substrate and put everything back in ? I had to do that with my cull tank - there is inert substrate but it was just too dirty and the nitrates were rising way to quickly. So I just cleaned the substrate under tap water and put everything back in, and luckily the cycle did not crash. Why would it I thought if the bacteria are mostly in the filter rather than the substrate ? So I guess as long as you are not using undergravel filter this should also work, right ? I mean we are probably getting rid of some of the bacteria that were in the substrate, however we are also cleaning the tank thus decreasing the bioload, so whatever is left in the filter media should be able to handle the waste shrimp produce. Your thought about this ?:)

Ok, so GH is a basic parameters we all know in our tanks, but still there seems to be contradictory information about what is the proper GH for bee shrimp. 1. GH of 6 2. GH 3-4 The claim one basically says that GH 6 provides enough nutrients for successful molt, but also added benefits: snippet from the shirakura site provides a good summary of that claim: On the other hand most Asian breeders claim that one should aim for GH in the range of 3-4, as lower GH equals... easier moulting. This claim is based on the assumption that with higher GH the shell gets thicker and as a result it gets more difficult for shrimp to moult. Obviously this claim is supported by the great success Asian breeders have with shrimp. So is there a conclusion to this ? Which approach is actually better for bee shrimp ?

I agree that lack of information is the problem with shrimp products so you never know what exactly goes into the water, and what you might be missing. I guess it is working to well for them to change, as people are blindly trying out each product.

The thing about gh+ products is that some can have just Ca and Mg which will result in low TDS. An example is Azoo gh up which will have gh 6 and Tds below 100. Shrimp dedicated products are most likely complimented with other minerals which the shrimp need, so the TDS is higher at the same gh level. The differences can be really big from product to product.

Are there any neo's that don't require culling ?

That should work just fine, but as 8 mentioned don't use ada. If you want to use inert+active substrate mix it is also good to place the active substrate in a large external filter, or external breeder boxes. This allows you to effortlesly replace the substrate when it is exhausted and does not take up space in the tank but the downside is that it might be more expensive. With the waterflow you also get more filtration surface for the bacteria.

Honestly do not bring shrimp before you get your parameters correct and stable. The shrimp will be much better with pH 6 and stable parameters than with what you are doing right now. pH alone cannot be the cause of deaths of the shrimp if it's stable - rcs can be easily kept on pH of 6 the only question is will they breed. You should firstly check for Nh3, NO2 and No3 if you have had some deaths.

We will have to disagree on that - from my experience, proper shrimplet survival rate is possible only with NO3 close to 0 (at least if we are talking Taiwan Bee and most likely high grade CRS). It won't kill your shrimp instantly, which is why I believe many overlook it's influence on shrimp condition, but it is a toxin nonetheless and shrimps are very vulnerable to it.

So I am starting a new tank in which I am planing to have babaulti, neos but also tigers. The thing is that I want to make it a bit rocky and I wonder how big weekly tds raise is acceptable. Currently I have added around 5kg od rocks and the TDS rises at around 2 ppm per 24h... Assuming nothing harmful leeches from the rocks is such tds raise acceptable in your opinion?