Raising gh

[magicdragon2]

Hi, i have been setting up a shrimp tank for a bit now and have it cycled+plants, however my tap water has a gh of 0. What's the best way of raising it, and can I use some pool chemicals I have spare?

 

[Colin_T]

Rift Lake water conditioner at a lower dose rate. It comes in a white powder and has a bunch of different minerals in that will raise the pH, GH & KH..

Before you add anything, what fish are in the tank?
What is the pH?
What is the KH?

 

[MaloK]

No pool stuff in your aquarium.

What kind of

?
I started a planted tank a couple months ago and introduced a bunch of cherry shrimps in there.

And I used SaltyShrimp Mineral GH/KH+ But if your KH and PH is already ok you could try SaltyShrimp Bee Shrimp GH+

 

[magicdragon2]

Rift Lake water conditioner at a lower dose rate. It comes in a white powder and has a bunch of different minerals in that will raise the pH, GH & KH..

Before you add anything, what fish are in the tank?
What is the pH?
What is the KH?

No pool stuff in your aquarium.

What kind of

?
I started a planted tank a couple months ago and introduced a bunch of cherry shrimps in there.

And I used SaltyShrimp Mineral GH/KH+ But if your KH and PH is already ok you could try SaltyShrimp Bee Shrimp GH+

kh seems to be 0-40 kinda hard to tell and ph around 7.4 since not fully dark blue but not green
rn theres no fish, only plants although i want to put blue dreams in

 

[MaloK]

You could add Calcium Chloride and Magnesium Sulphate in equal quantities. To obtain a GH near 110ppm also Potassium bi-carbonate/carbonate to raise you KH to 40ppm and let sit and re-test before water changes. You can also use a piece of limestone directly in the tank and monitor your KH level.

But I'm lazy and I got SaltyShrimp Mineral instead of playing the mad chemist.

Also a couple of pieces of Cholla wood and Catappa leaves (I found that oak leaves do a great job too) in the tank to help maintain your PH around 7.2 and promote the creation of bio-film.

If you're totally serious about breeding them I would also suggest a TDS meter and probably a RO unit. To be able to create completely your own mineralized water.

I'm only starting with shrimps... So you can consider me as an amateur. But I'm a serious one.

Two weeks later they are still all there. I managed to count them today.

 

[magicdragon2]

You could add Calcium Chloride and Magnesium Sulphate in equal quantities. To obtain a GH near 110ppm also Potassium bi-carbonate/carbonate to raise you KH to 40ppm and let sit and re-test before water changes. You can also use a piece of limestone directly in the tank and monitor your KH level.

But I'm lazy and I got SaltyShrimp Mineral instead of playing the mad chemist.

Also a couple of pieces of Cholla wood and Catappa leaves (I found that oak leaves do a great job too) in the tank to help maintain your PH around 7.2 and promote the creation of bio-film.

If you're totally serious about breeding them I would also suggest a TDS meter and probably a RO unit. To be able to create completely your own mineralized water.

I'm only starting with shrimps... So you can consider me as an amateur. But I'm a serious one.

Two weeks later they are still all there. I managed to count them today.


View attachment 334131

tysm! The saltyshrimp stuff seems perfect, if i decide to purchase it when I'm doing a water change should i pre-condition some water with it then do a water change with the conditioned water instead of tap, or just put tap water in along with the saltyshrimp mineral? Also, which size container of it would u recommend?

 

[MaloK]

I run my water over activated carbon for a few days with a box filter to make sure that there's absolutely no harmful chemicals possibly in the water then I precondition 1 day before water changes (minerals and tap water conditioner).

But the product can be dissolved in a small container with tank water just before adding. For the moment with my inexperience, I prefer to be able to test the water parameters before adding it...

I do no more than 20% a week, Shrimps do not produce a lot of waste, so 10%-20% change should be good enough for shrimp-only aquariums.

And they are very sensible to water parameters changes. So absolutely no swings of any kind are allowed. You should bring your desired water parameters slowly over the course of multiple water changes.

If the tank is heavily planted, some shrimp hobbyists don't even change their water for weeks or months if ever. That is where I get nervous a little, I think I should learn how to correctly balance this product before trying to temper directly with the tank water.

If you do a too big water change too quickly, you may induce the shrimp into premature molting, and that is not good at all.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Consider SeaChem Equilibrium for GH
For KH, consider a bag of crushed coral in your filter.

 

[MaloK]

Consider SeaChem Equilibrium for GH
For KH, consider a bag of crushed coral in your filter.

And a couple of larger pieces in the tank.

Shrimps will graze directly on it as it softens.

Edit:

If you use crushed corals or seashells in your filter, Rinse it very well, if you see little white spots falling on your plants, they will burn holes in them.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

edited so that the First sentence struck is now through because I followed the directions Malok provided in his post under mine.

Oops, I did not mean to hit the like button and the is no way to undo it. I do not like posts ever and it was an accident. I meant to hit Quote.

I have never had an issue with crushed coral which I bought as a substrate but only iuse relative to KH in bags in my filters. The bags are mostly finer mess. I also use bags of the coral in my bio-farm as the bacteria use it as an inorganic carbon source. I usually thow some bits of the coral into the tank as well when it has shrimp.

I also only dose the Equilibrium tanks which have assassin snails, shrimp and lots of live plants. My tap doesn't supply enough nor does the fert. I use.

 

[MaloK]

Just hit the like button again

Oops, I did not mean to hit the like button and the is no way to undo it. I do not like posts ever and it was an accident. I meant to hit Quote.

 

[StevenF]

Do you have a water softener.? Your location is listed as arizona which has hard water. A water softener removes the GH but adds sodium. And high levels of sodium are bad for fish and shrimp. If you are using RO water it is safe as long as your increase the GH. If you have a water softener. Use unsoftened water mixed with RO water.

 

[MuddyWaters]

I run my water over activated carbon for a few days with a box filter to make sure that there's absolutely no harmful chemicals possibly in the water then I precondition 1 day before water changes (minerals and tap water conditioner).

But the product can be dissolved in a small container with tank water just before adding. For the moment with my inexperience, I prefer to be able to test the water parameters before adding it...

I do no more than 20% a week, Shrimps do not produce a lot of waste, so 10%-20% change should be good enough for shrimp-only aquariums.

And they are very sensible to water parameters changes. So absolutely no swings of any kind are allowed. You should bring your desired water parameters slowly over the course of multiple water changes.

If the tank is heavily planted, some shrimp hobbyists don't even change their water for weeks or months if ever. That is where I get nervous a little, I think I should learn how to correctly balance this product before trying to temper directly with the tank water.

If you do a too big water change too quickly, you may induce the shrimp into premature molting, and that is not good at all.

Malok you do this for cherry shrimp? Wow, I started a shrimp tank about 2 weeks ago. The guy I talked to told me they are super-hardy and need no special treatment. This tank is well conditioned (about 2 years old) and I just removed a bunch of fish from it. I did water changes every 2 - 3 days before and I've been doing them for the shrimp too. I may need to slow that down it seems.

Are the (impressive) measures you take to maintain yours an abundance of caution or are they that sensitive?

 

[MaloK]

It's an abundance of cautions. But inadequate water parameters slowly leads to death. and water chemistry swing causes visible stress instantly.

The good part for me is that they tolerate a higher PH. My water is strange: GH80, KH20, PH 7.6-7.8 after sitting a while. Raising GH to 110 and KH to 40 Lifted the PH to 8.2-8.4 that is a little high for Neocardina. But still they seems to be doing a lot better now.

I never had a successful molt before I raise my GH over 100 ppm, they where slowly dying one after the other.

After that... I found empty shells and have babies that are starting to swim in open water.

On the negative side for some reason that escapes my understanding, slowly raising my GH and KH over a period of 5-6 days, caused a recession in the bacteria that process ammonia and level started rising a week or so afterwards.

As of today I consider that the tank has fallen back in a cycling process and I'm forced to do large water changes everyday. to keep ammonia under a bearable level for shrimps.

By adding water at the same time I remove some on the other side of the tank, I'm able to do 200% water change without them even noticing.

One of my Fire Red is about to molt soon, I can see her stretching her shell back and forth. and I can see the opening between the carapace and the first pleuron, I hope it succeed because I lost at least 3 that way at the moment, and one jumped out during maintenance, I found her later dried on the floor

A good number of them are still no-show for a while. but I saw one yesterday That I haven't seen for at least a week.

So it's pretty hard to have a pulse on what is going on... I have so much natural food growing in the tank for them, that they are not that much interested in additional food. But I can see that they have all full bellies (when I can see them).

So for the moment it's a mixed result with part of success and failure. But everyday when the babies coming out to swim in the open. It gives me some hope.

That said, cycling a tank with shrimps is far from what you would want to do. So next time I'll make sure that the bacteria colony is created in the exact water parameters that the future guests will require.

Maybe "I too" should have slowed down and fixed my water chemistry before adding the shrimps, this way I would have been able to continue the fishless cycle without problems. and saved a lot of water.

 

[MuddyWaters]

I never had a successful molt before I raise my GH over 100 ppm, they where slowly dying one after the other

oh wow! I need to check my GH. I have some GH raising additive I've put in, but I haven't bothered to do the test. Thanks for the heads-up MaloK!