emaratilicious Posted April 8, 2017 Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 Hi guys, I started to raise CRS and I noticed the white stripes are fading in one of them. I did test my water and these are the parameters: TDS: 185 pH: 7.1 kH: 4 Temp: 24.5c Ammonia: 0 The kH is not as recommended and I'm not sure if it matches up with other parameters or the test kit failed me. I'm using SL-aqa Soil and I don't have RO Unit. I didn't do any water change. Just top up using a dripper bucket are these parameters ok? and do you recommend me for any action? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wego21 Posted April 8, 2017 Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 Hello, I am quite new to shrimp keeping myself, but from what I see and the parameters for Crystal Red Shrimp that are online, your KH looks quite high. I am keeping CRS as well and my KH is 0 - 1, your PH is also a bit high for Crystal Red shrimp. Use this as refference for the parameters. If you want to keep Crystal Red Shrimp I would strongly advise you to get RO unit as they are more sensitive to the water parameters than Neocaridina type (like Red Cherry, rili and so on). You should also check your GH. If the colors are suddenly fading, it may be an indication of stress, if the shrimp is also racing around the tank like crazy then its definitely a sign that something is not good. for sharing info, my params for CRS are PH: 6.7 KH: 0 - 1 GH: 6 TDS: 175 temp: 23-24C Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emaratilicious Posted April 8, 2017 Author Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 31 minutes ago, wego21 said: Hello, I am quite new to shrimp keeping myself, but from what I see and the parameters for Crystal Red Shrimp that are online, your KH looks quite high. I am keeping CRS as well and my KH is 0 - 1, your PH is also a bit high for Crystal Red shrimp. Use this as refference for the parameters. If you want to keep Crystal Red Shrimp I would strongly advise you to get RO unit as they are more sensitive to the water parameters than Neocaridina type (like Red Cherry, rili and so on). You should also check your GH. If the colors are suddenly fading, it may be an indication of stress, if the shrimp is also racing around the tank like crazy then its definitely a sign that something is not good. for sharing info, my params for CRS are PH: 6.7 KH: 0 - 1 GH: 6 TDS: 175 temp: 23-24C Thanks man for replying. I'm doing a water change now. Hope to low the ph and kh I'm trying to avoid RO Unit. Hope I can make it with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wego21 Posted April 8, 2017 Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 hello, the RO unit is not so expensive, and it is a must if you want to keep higher grade and harder to keep shrimp (Taiwan bees, etc.) . My tap water has params that are ok for neocaridina, (TDS 150, GH6, KH2, PH 7.5) but I still bought the RO unit, the main reason is because you dont really know whats inside of the tap water (what is the TDS composed off, what metals are in water, chlorine, etc. ) and you also will not know when the params suddenly change, which may cause unexpected shrimp deaths. When you have RO unit you start from scratch, therefore you know what you put into the water, you know how much and what are the params. The params will be exactly the same each time if you stick to your routine. I started with rili shrimp mainly because my PH was to high and now I keep also CRS. Since I started to use RO watter, I was able to get the PH low enough to fit to the parameters. I use ADA Amazonia and a lot of it, and it had hard time to pull the PH down. Later however I want to keep the more expensive shrimp and there the RO unit is a must. All depends on you and your goal. Since I bought RO unit for our home usage (8 stage filtering) I use this as well for the shrimp. I think that you can get just a basic 3stage filter on amazon or ebay quite cheap (maybe 100$) and if you want to go for harder to keep shrimp in the future, just invest a bit. Also when you use tap watter, make sure to get rid of chlorine, I used Seachem Prime, Chlorine can also stress and kill shrimp. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emaratilicious Posted April 8, 2017 Author Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 (edited) After Water change, these are the parameters TDS: 166 pH: 6.9 kH: 3 Ammonia: 0 My tank is 10 Gallons and I changed 2 Gallons Edited April 8, 2017 by emaratilicious Changed 2 Gallons instead of 1 Gallon wego21 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricM Posted April 8, 2017 Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 you really need to get that KH down. its really taking life out of the soil. there will be a point at which the soil can't absorb anymore kh then it will be unable to lower your ph. kh is why your ph is so high with a buffering soil. and the only way to get that KH down is RO water. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emaratilicious Posted April 8, 2017 Author Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 you really need to get that KH down. its really taking life out of the soil. there will be a point at which the soil can't absorb anymore kh then it will be unable to lower your ph. kh is why your ph is so high with a buffering soil. and the only way to get that KH down is RO water. Thanks man for the advicd.I don't wanna be hard but RO is my last option.I have good tab water parameters pH : 6.6-6.8KH : 1.5 dGH : Nitrite NO2 : 0.25 mg/lNitrate NO3 : 10-18 mg/lCO2 : Chlorine Cl : 0I believe there is something worng in the tank itself. Maybe the stones or the additives I'm using.Sent from my MHA-L29 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLui83 Posted April 8, 2017 Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 what is in your tank? take a picture. You are correct, if your only using tap water the ph should remain around that 6.6-6.8. But whatever is in the tank is raising it, and the kh too. IF those are the parameters from your tap, thats not bad. whats GH from tap? and TDS? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OMG Aquatics Posted April 8, 2017 Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 Since your tank KH is higher than your tap KH, either you are adding something that's raising KH or the stones you have are raising KH. To ensure SL-Aqua substrate to work at it's best, you need to have 0 KH. 1 KH might sound "okay" but it WILL deplete your substrate buffering ability a lot quicker than if you had 0 KH. It's almost a year for my tank with SL-Aqua soil and it's still holding a strong 5.3-5.5 pH EricM 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emaratilicious Posted April 8, 2017 Author Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 1 hour ago, JLui83 said: what is in your tank? take a picture. You are correct, if your only using tap water the ph should remain around that 6.6-6.8. But whatever is in the tank is raising it, and the kh too. IF those are the parameters from your tap, thats not bad. whats GH from tap? and TDS? I don't have gH test kit. TDS of tap water is around 65 Here are some pictures of my tank. It is 10 Gallons I used ADA PowerSand, Azoo NitriPro, ADA Bacter 100 and Tantora Mont Powers as layers of the soil. So I checked these powders and most of them with no information except for Tantora which says "Contain sufficient nutritious (Calcium, Magnesium, Silicon etc)". Do you think this is the reason? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emaratilicious Posted April 8, 2017 Author Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 1 hour ago, OMG Aquatics said: Since your tank KH is higher than your tap KH, either you are adding something that's raising KH or the stones you have are raising KH. To ensure SL-Aqua substrate to work at it's best, you need to have 0 KH. 1 KH might sound "okay" but it WILL deplete your substrate buffering ability a lot quicker than if you had 0 KH. It's almost a year for my tank with SL-Aqua soil and it's still holding a strong 5.3-5.5 pH Did you use any additives within the soil? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OMG Aquatics Posted April 8, 2017 Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 Nope. What I like most about SL-Aqua soil is that the ammonia leech is very minimum. I simply dropped the soil in. Filled water 1" above substrate level. Dosed Stability all around to seed the substrate. 2-3 days later, shrimp are in. EricM 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emaratilicious Posted April 8, 2017 Author Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 4 minutes ago, OMG Aquatics said: Nope. What I like most about SL-Aqua soil is that the ammonia leech is very minimum. I simply dropped the soil in. Filled water 1" above substrate level. Dosed Stability all around to seed the substrate. 2-3 days later, shrimp are in. I regret adding these layers of additives. No return back point :/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricM Posted April 8, 2017 Report Share Posted April 8, 2017 yeah your setup is very complex. who knows what all the different products mixed in your soil are doing, plus the water you are using. emaratilicious 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jessaweeshrimp Posted April 21, 2017 Report Share Posted April 21, 2017 Go to the grocery store and buy Distilled water. Zero GH and KH!!! Then you can use a GH remineralizer to bring your GH up while keeping your KH low Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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