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DIY Substrate for soft water shrimp


wicca32

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That's pretty cool, but also a lot of work. It may just be worth while to buy a bag of Amazonia and call it a day. There's no mention of duration before it needs to be recharged. What it buffers the ph to. How long it buffers for.

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That's great info! I like the analysis of the goals and properties of the substrate and how it meets them.

I guess you just have to order the chemicals, humic and fulvic acids? I'm not familiar with those being readily accessible, like the other ingredients.

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Hi all,

 

I'm the owner for ShrimpyDaddy.com. I happened to stumble into this forum thread by looking at the traffic of my blog.

 

I saw you guys have two questions above:

1. What is the dosage of each ingredient?

2. How long does the buffering last?

 

For question 1, it really depending on the ingredient you use. How it works is by ratio and not really on dosage. For example, the soft-water shrimp substrate I had charged up is based on 1:2 of rock dust and organic acid. If you are planning to have stem plants, 1:1 is possible. After that, it will be 1 tablespoon of the mixture per liter of water used to water log the substrate.

 

For question 2, based on my experience, if you are not using hard water, it can last pretty much as long as commercial substrate. For Sulawesi substrate will be different, it is depending on the amount of water you change, the salt you use to replenish the RO water and how many driftwood is in the tank.

 

Feel free to ping me if you have any questions.  :D

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Since you are living in US, you can easily order from eBay or Amazon. Get those for plant fertilizing or human consumption grade are good enough.

 

Alternatively, if your area has good horticulture or hydroponic shops, you should be able to get from them too.

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For the DIY substrate, I have been using for more than half a year. For other type of DIYs (you can check out my blog), I have been using them for years and are on high-end shrimp, which includes Pinto and Mosura BB.

 

The key thing of having a sustainable substrate is to use 0 dKH water. If your water does not have alkaline substances, the substrate will automatic recharge the organic acid from the shrimp, fish and plant waste. The only thing you need to dose frequently will be trace elements, which is essential when you are using commercial substrate.

 

I have a few articles on my website, you can can read them to have an understanding on keep the shrimps in more scientific method (but it is not rocket science :thumbsu: ), instead of relying on the market gimmick from product manufacturer.

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On 9/27/2015 at 6:20 PM, Shrimpy Daddy said:

 

This is an old article. Nowadays, the best DIY/ cheap substrate will be using lava sand.

ok, thanks for the information update.

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