Glad it was helpful!

Perfect!

I’ve never changed water whilst it’s been cycling. Just let it do the cycle

Understand. Around 6 pH is fine don't really need to go down that low unless you are doing very specific type of selective breeding. If your current soil works that is ok. Try the thin soil method, probably it ain't soil problem.

Most welcome

Cheers

Thanks Ray!

The pre cycled sponge helped a lot in the cycling process, if they contain beneficial bacteria already you are sorted.

Yes its to reduce the nitrate at the end of the cycle

i think probably relook into the whole process how you get to 5ppm vs trying to do WC during a cycle. A cycle shouldn't have a WC in between, only at the end of the cycle and the start of keeping livestock. this is the same for fishes and shrimps.

@@ShrimpSanctuary thank you! Also appreciate your advice, will try it on my next tank 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

as long as they are pH reducing it is ok, ammonia is simply food source for beneficial bacteria to colonize. There are people adding fish food, ammonium chloride as a ammonia source. nothing to do with the substrate. if it comes together with the substrate, it will be simpler. eventually we all need food to survive, so does beneficial bacteria.

@@ShrimpSanctuary Thanks! As for cycling, what do you do to get rid of high ammonia from substrate if your pH is at 6 or less? Nitrifying bacteria stop converting ammonia at that level so do you find the algae ends up taking care of the ammonia or do you just wait until the end of the cycle, remove as much as you can with a large water change, and go from there? I guess since ammonia isn't toxic at that pH it doesn't matter too much if there's a little around.

@@shrimplyexplained Nitrifying bacteria slows down in colonization in low pH and stalls at high ammonia above 4ppm. we build nitrifying bacteria to convert ammonia, that is why it takes a long time for the tank to cycle and mature in a low pH environment. Some of the soil these days we have test around 1-2ppm of ammonia, so it's fairly decent amount of ammonia to kick start the cycling process and if an old sponge is used, beneficial bacteria is already in there at a dormant state. Bacteria don't just die, they become dormant in unfavourable condition and once the environment is suitable, they come back to life. This is how nature and the world has been operating millions of years without human intervention. Marsh land, peat bogs with low pH are thriving with life even at low pH, and there has to be beneficial bacteria to ensure sustainable life form. The relationship at the very beginning of a tank cycle without beneficial bacteria is often suited where lights are not on to prevent algae growth and giving a chance for the beneficial bacteria to colonize first. Both compete on ammonia source, resulting in even slower bacteria growth, however beneficial bacteria has an eventual output of Nitrate which algae doesn't. once we see nitrate reading, we know there is beneficial bacteria doing the conversion and once it is done, ammonia is 0. The degree of toxicity varies and is relative to the shrimp as well, at least for us we try provide the best environment we can for the shrimps in both breadth and depth.

@@ShrimpSanctuary Thank you for the thorough response! It's interesting to consider how the low pH environment of caridina tanks differ from those of hard-water species. If kept at pH below 6, then the ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and archaea may be completely different species vs higher pH environments. I'll have to do some research to understand how much of the ammonia gets absorbed by algae and plants vs converted by bacteria and think about how that impacts cycling. Keeping the lights off for a while is an interesting trick!

​@@shrimplyexplained There are quite a few papers release by UCLA i believe on cycling tanks and also some more in-depth ones. we also partner with Singapore Tertiary education for students to do their final year research on such topics. The results are really great i would say, a lot of the hear-say and what-not are qualify with the results at the end. I think with sufficient funding more of such research can be conducted. As caridina shrimps isn't a 'money' making topic to research on, many school shy away from it. Hence, we are often stuck between a hard place and a rock where we need more scientific studies on these topics but lack funding.

Weekly whenever possible

50% water change?