Jump to content

Benibachi soil


ineke

Recommended Posts

  • HOF Member

If I decide to use benibachi soil in my 20 litre cube how long does it last? Does it break down and need replacing? Is there anything else you can use to buffer tap ph of 7.4 to below 7 for CRS?

Thanks

ineke

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Ineke, If you were investing in benibachi soil, I would go with RO/Di water, as your tap water's PH @ 7.4 will continually fight against the natural buffering capacity at 6.4. The "life" of the soil is dependent on this. My benibachi soil is approx. 16 months old, and still buffering well.....but i've only used RO/DI water, and kept GH at 4, which is its's natural buffering capacity too....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • HOF Member

missed this post sorry BB. I have got the RO unit now and waiting for the salty shrimp. Have changed some of the water in my tanks with the RO water. My problem now is I don't have a spare tank to pull down to put the Benibachi soil in before my new shrimp come. I will sort something out over the next week or two then I will buy the soil as I really do want to keep my few CRS healthy. Dean messaged me last night and has scared the c###p out of me that I will lose what i have because I don't have the salty shrimp and have started using the RO water. Luckily all tanks still have some tap water and the TDS is around 180. Need to save some money and get the important things instead of dabbling in everything me thinks!!!!

How do I get my shrimp used to the new set up as at the moment the cube is ph 6.8 kh 3 gh 4 TDS 192 amomnia 0 nitrite 0 and nitrate 0-5(varies) So if I set up a new tank with all the right WP and benibachi and salty shrimp how do I transfer them. Do I do slow changes over a week or so with water thats had the salty shrimp and ph buffered in the original tank then get them out and slowly drip feed the water from the new tank into a bag then release them?:confused-new:

Cheers

Ineke:encouragement:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi ineke, yeah RO/Di water is absolutely pure, and nothing lives in it.....so definitely need to remineralise it etc.... SoundS like you're ticking all the boxes....shrimps just need an acclimatisation for any chnage in WP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • HOF Member

Thanks BB I will get there in the end. Money is the limiter as with all of us. But if I stick with what I have and slowly get the CRS tank going properly I should be able to enjoy myself. Bit worried now but as I said I will have the salty shrimp next week so will add that to the water changes for the CRS and leave the cherries as they are. Once I build up a bit of cash I will invest in a better CRS male and see where it leads.

Cheers

Ineke

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...
Hi Ineke' date=' If you were investing in benibachi soil, I would go with RO/Di water, as your tap water's PH @ 7.4 will continually fight against the natural buffering capacity at 6.4. The "life" of the soil is dependent on this. My benibachi soil is approx. 16 months old, and still buffering well.....but i've only used RO/DI water, and kept GH at 4, which is its's natural buffering capacity too....[/quote']

any idea what is the longest time it can hold for?

I've had mine for 1 yr and I'm hoping I won't have to change it soon

I'm using co2 and ph is around 5.5 when co2 is on :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From what I have read about peoples experience with this soil on this forum, it all depends on what water you are using. Some people who are using RO & SaltyShrimp have got 18mths +, but then people who have used just tap water have striped the buffing capacity out of the soil in just 3mths. So it all depends on what water you are using :encouragement:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe it's the Fulvic grains that do the buffing & once you start loosing the buffing capacity you can just add more of the grains to help boost the capacity. I know BB has done some experimentation on this so maybe he will be able to give you better numbers on the effects :victorious:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The actual chemical is humic and or fulvic acid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a question does anyone know the conversion from kg to lts. The package is 3 or 5 kg but on boss aquaria its in lts as in a 120 x 45 x 45 requires 30lts so how many bags is that

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I used 2 bags of normal & 1 bag of powder per 60 x 45 x 45, that gave me about 8cm deep, so I'm guessing with your tank being twice as big you'll need 4 bags of normal & 2 bags of powder, hope this helps :encouragement:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • HOF Member

Dean explained it somewhere litres and kilos are interchangeable so 4 litres is equal to 4 kgs

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2/3 normal base & 1/3 powder top. Can use super powder instead of powder but it's way more expensive :victorious:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • HOF Member

I have normal and they seem fine however I haven't had any shrimplets in there and apparently it's good to put the powder over the top as it is smaller and easier for the shrimplets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Join Our Community!

    Register today, ask questions and share your shrimp and fish tank experiences with us!

  • Must Read SKF Articles

  • Posts

    • sdlTBfanUK
      Thats a great photo, beautiful blue bolt, I hope it survived the molt without dropping the eggs! I think I can just about see some black dots (eyes) on the central egg but can't be 100% sure. I used to (and plan to again) do weekly water change of 10-15% but if you do too large or quick (not drip in new water) that would likely trigger a molt. What KH are they in, my new setup is sitting at (and refusing to budge) KH 3 and PH 7.5 so I may have to settle for neocaridina shrimp this time as opposed to the caridina I want, though not looking/deciding just yet, give the tank a bit more of a run in! Tap water here starts at kH 14, tds 320, when filtered goes to KH 0 and PH 6 but when put in the tank keeps going to KH3 and PH 7.5 despite 3 x 50% water changes???? You may be at 'maximum capacity' with only 20L tank especially if the tank is a cube type rather than shallow type?
    • beanbag
      Right now this tank only has blue bolts and golden bee (red bolts?).  The eggs start off all brown, but at the end, I notice that some are kind of a clear pink-ish color.  So I don't know if that is the egg color of dud or golden bee.  Picture of shrimp only about half hour before molting. The water is always RO + remineralizer, so it should be ok. The tank seems to still be on a "good streak" ever since I started the regimen of weekly water change, monthly gravel vac and plant trim.  The point being to keep the amount of waste low and removing moss / floating plants so that the nitrates go towards growing algae.  At one point, I had three berried females, but only netted about half dozen babies by the end, due to this early molting problem.  There might be about 30-40 shrimp total in 5 gallons, but still very few full-sized adults.
    • ngoomie
      Alright, I've done a bit more research on gentian violet's cancer-causing potential but I haven't yet done research on malachite green's to compare. But from reading the California propositon 65 document about GV (North Americans incl. some Canadians will recognize this as the law that causes some products they buy to be labelled with "known to the state of California to cause cancer", including the exact product I bought) it seems that the risk of cancer is related to internal use, either injection or ingestion. Speaking of ingestion, I think GV bans mainly relate to its use in treating fish/shrimp/etc. which are intended for human consumption, because of the above. And in countries where GV isn't banned for this purpose, it does seem to get used on various species of shrimp without causing any issue for the shrimp themselves (at least enough so for shrimp farming purposes). See the following: In February, the FDA Began Rejecting Imported Shrimp for Gentian Violet and Chloramphenicol (2022 article by Southern Shrimp Alliance) FDA Starts New Calendar Year by Refusing Antibiotic-Contaminated Shrimp from Three BAP-Certified Indian Processors and Adding a BAP-Certified Vietnamese Processor to Import Alert (2024 article by Southern Shrimp Alliance) Southern Shrimp Alliance and some other organizations have tons of other articles in this vein, but I'd be here for a while and would end up writing an absolutely massive post if I were to link every instance I found of articles mentioning shrimp shipments with gentian violet and/or leucogentian violet registering as contaminants. That being said, I know shrimp farmed for consumption and dwarf shrimp are often somewhat distantly related (in fact, the one time a shrimp's species name is listed that I can see, it's the prawn sp. Macrobrachium rosenbergii, who at best occupies the same infraorder as Neocaridina davidi but nothing nearer), but this at least gives a slightly better way of guessing whether it will be safe for aquarium dwarf shrimp or not than my bladder snail anecdote from the OP.
    • sdlTBfanUK
      I would hazard a guess that perhaps those eggs were unfertilized and thereby unviable? Did the eggs change colour, usually yellow to grey as the yolks used up, or any eyes in the eggs. Is your water ok, using RO remineralised and the parameters in range, as I have heard others say that if the water isn't good it can 'force' a molt? How is it going overall, do you have a good size colony in the tank, you may have reached 'maximum occupancy' as a tank can only support so many occupants.
    • beanbag
      Hello folks,  The current problem I am having is that my Taiwan bee shrimp are molting before all their eggs have hatched.  Often the shrimp keep the eggs for 40+ days.  During that time, they lose about half or so, either due to dropping or duds or whatever.  Shortly before molting they look to have about a dozen left, and then they molt with about half a dozen eggs still on the shell.  Then the other shirmp will come and eat the shell.  These last few times, I have been getting around 0-3 surviving babies per batch.  I figure I can make the eggs hatch faster by raising the water temperature more (currently around 68F, which is already a few degrees higher than I used to keep it) or make the shrimp grow slower by feeding them less (protein).  Currently I feed Shrimp King complete every other day, and also a small dab of Shrimp Fit alternating days.  Maybe I can start alternating with more vegetable food like mulberry?  or just decrease the amount of food?
×
×
  • Create New...