How to reduce KH in shrimp tank?

[Urban Aquaria]

Thanks UA. That's great detailed advice.

Actually I'm quite tempted to upgrade my 1 ft tank to 2 ft. With that, I'm afraid that I will not have enough old water tank to fill up the new larger tank for cycling.

In addition, I will like to use ADA Amazonia soil instead of shrimp soil for the much heard about quality. The cycling time will be much longer I suppose?

It'll definitely be better if you can switch up to a larger tank, more stable and it will be able to handle a larger shrimp population.

The best way to do this is to just run your existing tank along with the new larger tank concurrently. Setup the new tank and the new filter, add new substrate, then transfer half of the existing seasoned bio-media over to the new tank's filter, then let it cycle from there. Once the cycle is complete and stable (which should be faster since the filter is already seeded with existing beneficial bacteria), then drip acclimate the shrimps before transferring them over to the new tank.

Note that just transferring tank water over doesn't help as much in seeding the cycle as very little of the beneficial bacteria reside in the tank water itself... transferring tank water is mainly just to smoothen the transition of the shrimps to the new tank.

ADA Amazonia aquasoil is a popular substrate amongst shrimp keepers... but note that aquasoil is designed in the first place for plants, not shrimps. It just happens that aquasoil buffers pH and kH to the required levels for shrimps so people like to use it.

But do consider that if you are mainly focusing on keeping and breeding shrimps and not much on plants or aquascaping, then you'll likely end up having to do water changes to flush out the ammonia and nutrients that are originally intended to boost plant growth, which is sort of a waste (and alot of extra work too).

A funny analogy is like buying a hamburger and then throwing away the beef patty and just eat the bread.

Therefore if you are more focused on the shrimps, then do consider using good quality soil designed specifically for shrimps instead, those will buffer the parameters, release beneficial minerals and elements for shrimps, have very low or often no ammonia, and hence cycle very quickly so you don't need to go through weeks of tedious waiting for it to become stable for your shrimps.

[popimac]

Ok, tested my tap water and the parameters are:
Ph 7
Gh 3
Kh 2
Tds 82

Guess it's not the tap water problem for the high kh. Perhaps it really is the (expired) soil. still in dilemma on the 2 options with new substrate. Giving a long thought about it due to space constraint.

Also came about this on the website, about ada soils. Looks like Africana and malayan are good choice for shrimp soil due to the ph/kh buffering ability and low/none of nh4 & no2. Benibachi and rac soils are options too. Anyone using africana or malayan soils as shrimp soil at the moment? Feedbacks?

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[popimac]

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[Urban Aquaria]

I've only known people who've kept apistos or discus with malaya and africana aquasoil... but so far haven't come across anyone using them for shrimps, maybe because the pH buffers to much lower levels than required and the brown soil color probably doesn't contrast as well with shrimps colors.

[Shadow]

Since your tap is ok, do you have stone inside tank? Shell inside filter? Or your media increase the kh?

[popimac]

Some grey stone pebbles which I already took out. The filter media are the the ones that came with eheim 2213 when I bought them. No shell in the tank nor filter canister.

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[catohcat]

There is a trend of using africana & malaya soil for taiwan bee shrimp because the pH is just right for them as well as the black kk/panda stand out really nice on these gravels.

[popimac]

Set up my new tank using brand new ada africana soil and my mature canister filter. Took 3 days to fully cycled. Kh at 0-1. Think the chart above really is true, especially on nh4 and no2. Just sharing my experience. Cheers.

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