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Hi all, I am a newbie to shrimp keeping with my first tank up and running about 6 months now, That one is a 2.5 gal with RCS. Have learned a lot...much of it the hard way...and about to set up another 2.5 gal which will be for CRS...and maybe later add CBS. My questions are primarily substrate related. First tank I just used about one inch of gravel. For this next tank I have acquired SL Aqua Nature Soil..."fine" granules. With my fish tanks ...and my first shrimp tank I sometimes do a gravel vac during a water change. Is it possible to vac something like nature soil? Or rather do I just leave the substrate alone and do simple water changes? Secondary question..how deep should the soil be...thinking about 1.5 inches or so. Thanks!

Gravel vacuuming a planted substrate is not necessary, especially in the first 6 months. But you can certainly do so if you find a lot of muck in the substrate. If you have lots of root plants, then vac less. If you have very little rooted plants, like mosses and ferns with roots above the substrate, then vac more - even then it's not necessary to vac very often. I use a glass feeding dish to minimise food falling in between the substrate, that helps minimise the need to vacuum. You should try a feeding dish as well. When you find your water parameters like TDS, and GH climbing and water changes are not helping to bring it down to CRS/CBS suitable levels ... then a substrate vac might be in order. For the most part, just a simple water change is all that is required. 1.5 inches is ok for most tanks. But since you have a 2.5gal tank, start at 1inch. The substrate will be rich when new, and can/could cause the pH, to drop too much in such a small tank.

Thank you. I know it's better to keep the colours seperate so they breed true but as these are just for me I like to see variety in the tank. It only takes a generation or so to get them breeding true again.