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Capping ista plant substrate


Rambozo

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I have setup a two foot tank about six months ago. I have ista plant substrate in it It is not keeping the right parameters.

I only have one bag in it and I was thinking of rescaling and putting one or two bags of up aqua shrimp sand over the top.

What do think of the buffering capabilities of this?

I only have about 6 cbs in there at the moment with out the cleaning crew. Which are three SAE and four otto's.

There is a fair amount of plants at the moment but in the rescape I am thinking of only having ug, moss and Anubius.

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The ph is a 7 to 7.5 and the khamis at four and the gh is at 2.

The shrimp just don't seem to be active and they are not fully coloured up. The temp is at 23.

The plants are growing crazy. But the shrimp just don't seem healthy and are not breeding.

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Your PH is way too high for CBS & the GH is a bit low but ok, the KH is on the high side of normal too. Do you have any rocks in the tank that could be raising the PH & KH? Also, what water are you using, RO or tap water?

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I don't think the ista plant soil is good for bee shrimp and the like. ista have a proper shrimp soil that is good ph 5.5-6.0.

If your committed to capping the soil i would probably go atleast 5kg of beni powder. It looks awesome and will hopefully buffer to what u need.. (depending on how much plant soil you've used).

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Yeah thanks for the replies.

I am using ro water with salty shrimp.

I am going to grab some benibachi substrate and re scape ASAP.

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