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Hiya Y'all! Dose any one have any info on Bio-Floc with ornamental shrimp? Quantities of Bio-Floc to use in nano tanks of less than 5 gallons? Has any one experienced deaths using Bio-Floc?

So I’m new at both fish keeping and shrimp keeping. Now I have 2 - 5 gallon fish tanks (one with a Hillstream loach, 4 Danios, a couple moss balls and some hornwort. The other has 1 male betta, 2 mystery snails, a moss ball and some hornwort) and 1 - 29 gallon tank that I’m currently trying to cycle (right now it has hornwort, java moss and some spiderwood in it but no fish/snails/shrimp) I’ve been testing my water in all my tanks about once a week. I started my two other fish tanks out of an impulse almost... I saw my betta at Pet Supplies Plus had a tank in my basement and decided I had to take him home... so I hadn’t cycled my 5 gallon tanks before I stuck anything in. I know it’s not good but I hadn’t done any research so I didn’t know better. Now I do. But my question is: I haven’t had ANY nitrites in any of my tanks. My ammonia and nitrates are there... my ammonia hasn’t gotten over 1 ppm and my nitrates haven’t gotten over around 40 ppm in ANY tank that I have. But why am I not seeing any nitrites? Is it Bc my tanks have plants in them? Thank you for reading this super long post and thanks in advance for any advice/answers you can give😊

Hi I have an issue with my old tank, which has over 2 years right now and the issue is NO3. Currently I am forced to do 25-30% water changes twice a week, and this is just enough to keep the NO3 below 10. The tank is 30L (8 gal), inert substrate, heavily planted, I add no fertilizers. Two HOB filters - one is sponge, the other one is small sponge + peat + JBL nitratex. For water changes I use salty shrimp GH +, Azoo Triple Black Water, Azoo Mineral Plus(every second week) and Azoo Ph Down, to adjust the pH of the water that goes into the tank with what's already there. As for bacteria I add seachem pristine, and seachem stability once a week around 2ml of each. Feeding is once per 2-3 days, small amounts that gets eaten in a few hours. So I had that issue already around 5 months back and what I did is bought the JBL bionitratex and added duckweed, and it did solved the problem but to get a good result I had to use two bags for a single tank (the product comes with 4 bags total). Now this thing is quiet expensive imo for the time it lasts, so I would like to ask for any other options to keep the NO3 in check, as the plants are clearly not able to handle that. From my observations - there is a substantial amount of muck in the substrate, but since the tank is heavily planted I cannot vacuum it. Quick pic of the tank below. Your help greatly appreciated !

I think this might be a bit long-winded so apologies up front! I have recently started to care for cherry shrimp having had no problems with amano shrimp in my other 2 tanks. I understood they were easy to care for and could tolerate a wide range of water parameters.(Hmm!) I have a 19L shrimp tank with 10 white pearl and 1 blue phantom shrimp at the moment. Previously I bought 3 blue phantoms (not sure if they are blue jellies, but very similar). Had to keep them in a 30L tank with only assassins snails for company whilst the shrimp tank finished cycling. Lost 1 blue straight away, saw the 2nd one disappearing down the throat of an assassin snail about 3 days later so I assume it died beforehand (I hope it did!) The 3rd one survived. I then purchased 3 more blues and transferred them all to the shrimp tank which at that time was a 12L tank. Couldn't keep the temperature stable so upgraded to a 19L - that's all I have room for now. Transferred the equipment and could only find the one blue again - the same one that survived before I'm sure. It seemed to be much more settled in the larger tank so I got 10 white pearl shrimp and was advised by the breeder/retailer to keep the TDS at 250 as it helps them to moult. (I top up my tap water from 110 - 250 using Salty Shrimp GH+) He also advised keeping the pH 7.5, temperature around 21⁰C and the nitrates under 10 ppm. Here's where I'm struggling - we've had a heatwave in the UK and I'm using 2 fans to try to keep it under control. Without the fans it runs up to 28⁰ on the hottest days. Also I've been having to do water changes every 3 days to keep the nitrates under 10. Got 2 moss-balls in there at the moment which are nice and green - have moved every other plant out as they start to melt due to lack of nutrients I think and probably contributed to the nitrate situation in the first instance. However it hasn't gone away completely and I'm still having to do W/C every few days which is really frustrating. Other water parameters: Ammonia 0ppm Nitrites 0 ppm Nitrates up to 25 ppm if I leave the water changes for more than 3-4 days - had 1 shrimp jump out of the water at that level! pH 7.8 stable temperature 19.5-23.5 depending on weather. I don't have GH or KH tests as I feel I'm juggling too many balls as it is at the moment. TDS increases by 10-15 daily - return it to 250 with W/C Yesterday I added 2 banana leaves and 4 alder cones as I heard they gradually reduce the pH and since my water is at the top of the range for cherries I thought it might help. I also thought it would give them something to graze on, on the days I don't feed them. Added a guava leaf a couple of days ago and there's been a cholla log in there for quite a while now and that was very popular to begin with, but they seem to have lost interest in it and other food at the moment. The water is so dark today it's like black water so have removed the banana leaves. It's almost like they are spaced out or stoned! What am I doing wrong to need to do so many water changes due to nitrates? What temperature fluctuation is acceptable? I'm sorry for the long post, but have tried to include as much information as possible. Thank you for sticking with it this far!