Water keeps going acidic, don't know what to do

[thrillex]

Tank keeps going acidic, need advice

 

So I have a small 1.5ish gallon jar. Heavily planted. Fully cycled. Had 11 neocaridinas in there. My ph keeps dropping to 6.0. I think it's because I used too much aquasoil relative to the amount of water in the tank.

 

Kept using baking soda to adjust the ph higher to 7ish, but it always eventually fell back to 6. I've added aragonite sand onto the substrate but it still keeps falling to 6. Half the shrimp have died presumably from me constantly fluctuating the pH up and down. The aragonite has now raised my GH to 8 when it was mostly around 4 before so I'm hesitant to add any more.

 

At this point I kinda want to give up and just keep the tank running at 6. Some people are very against running neocaridinas in a acidic tank but I've heard some success stories. I'm just concerned about ramshorn snails I have in there and also I'm worried about the pH dropping below 6 as the api test kit only goes down to 6.

 

People online seem to often recommend against things like seachem alkaline buffer but it's one thing I haven't tried yet. Anybody have any advice?

[svetilda]

I don't have any experience with the Seachem buffer but I know that neocaridina shrimp don't like soft water. Maybe you should try caridinas in your jar? Don't buy anything fancy and expensive, just a few low grade crystal red or black shrimp and see how they behave.