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If you need to raise KH for Neos, the economical way is to use Bicard Soda (not baking powder, however which has an extra raising agent for baking cakes). it is much cheaper and does the same. You might already have that in your kitchen. As with anything that changes your water parameters, make the change slowly if you have shrimp or fish already in the tank. You can make the change faster if there are no livestock in the tank. When you are confident enough, have a read of my "DIY remineralisation for RO or rain water" thread in Water Parameters subforum. You can start making your own salty shrimp in bulk for a lot less.

I would like to add some unsolicited suggestions to jayc's advice. After the part about 99% water change and add back remineralized water: Get some household cleaner ammonia (the one that is only ammonia and has no other added chemicals like surfactants) and purposely dose the tank until it has 1 ppm ammonia. A "fully cycled" tank will take that 1ppm ammonia and turn it into nothing but nitrates in about a day. Then do water change again to reduce nitrates. Once the shrimp are in, test the ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate every day for approx two weeks. Get a bottle of Seachem Prime ready in case the cycle "collapses" and you start to see ammonia and nitrite again. If it does collapse, you will have to re-dose the tank with one of those bacteria in a bottle products like Seachem stability, tetra safestart, etc.

It is better tracking ammonia to determine when a tank has completed cycling. Often nitrites are undetectable, as it is converted faster to nitrate than ammonia to nitrite. Point is you could get a false sense of security. You have an ammonia kit right? Don't waste ro or distilled water when cycling a new tank. Tap water, dechlorinated is perfect for cycling tanks. Tap water has high KH and pH which is better for bacteria to multiply. Tap water has ammonia as food source for the bacteria. RO or distilled water is missing those and needs to be added for ideal bacterial growth. It's still possible but takes longer. Add 27 -28 deg C temps and a tank will cycle very quickly. That's why I said change 90 to 99 % of the water after the tank is cycled to reset to the parameters you want. Also monitor pH during the cycling. When pH drops below pH 7, do a 50% water change to get pH up again and to add more food (ammonia) for the growing bacteria. That's the real reason for a water change during tank cycling. Water change is not to remove ammonia, that just removes the food for the bacteria. Don't remove the food source needed for good bacterial growth! So water changes in a cycling tank is not needed until pH drops below 7. Bacterial growth is not as fast in acidic pH. Let pH drop to 5's or 6's, and bacteria growth will even stop or reverse. I'm typing on my phone on a moving train, so forgive the spelling mistakes and shortened sentences.

Wow! That is alot of babies you have! Well, good job it surely means you are doing things right! Hope that encourages you! Yep i guess if you are not in the mood to do it than another day would be better, sometimes it requires looking intently at them for a good while to see their true potential, quite a painstaking process! Guess when i get there with as many babies as you, i would need to ask how you do it because culling is another area new to me! Do you have this brand (borneo wild) in uk? I just bought the bio film conditioner, i think it is quite a good product. Like feeding your shrimps but its clean feeding i suppose? Dont know how to word it but its essentially bacteria and not food but will become micro food when left in the tank? Works great especially for a tank run over with babies like yours. Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

Thats one serious looking unit, I will stick with my zerowater Jug I think. Hopefully JayC may be able to see if your unit has the tap he talks about. I have chickened out of culling for today (well all this week actually) as I can't see any I want to cull. The only reason for culling some (23 todate) is so I don't get over-run, got loads of babies so must be over 100 shrimps in the tank at the moment? I don't want anything to go wrong due to too many shrimps and have enough room/biofilm etc for the babies that come along. I think I will put spinach in the tank tomorrow and that should bring them ALL out so will pick a couple then - well that's the theory/plan anyway! Simon

Well that says it's for parasites lol. But it also does fin rot. So, yeah. All good then.

Fancy. Just make sure that one of those stages is NOT an alkalising stage. RO water is acidic by default since it is stripped of all salts and minerals. If the RO filter has an alkalising stage, it raises alkalinity (obviously, duh). It does that to make the water drinkable for humans. Pure RO water is Acidic and is not good for drinking. That acidic RO water will rot your teeth for one. So make sure your unit, if it has an alkalising stage, can be bypassed or turned off when you use it for aquariums. My RO unit has this alkalising stage, but has a "tap" to turn it off. See that "Alkaline cartridge" at the bottom, it has a tap to the right that allows RO water to bypass the alkalising stage. Turn it on for drinking water. Turn it off for aquarium water. Actually, you could probably use the alkaline cartridge for Neos to raise the KH and pH. But check test it to ensure it is within the parameters for Neos.

Oh wow, you are going for it in a big way, but once you have all the equipment it will make life easier in the long term and you won't need to keep faffing about with different waters. As the chap said on that video (watched it again last night, it is very good) even neos do better in remineralised RO water than tap water anyway. It also covered the different 'salty shrimp' remineralisers, ie GH+ for caridina, GH/KH+ neos, and another for sulwasi. I had a quick look on my suppliers website and saw this so there is a product 'out there' that just does KH and expect you can get that from somewhere locally if you WANT to go that route, but it will probably be harder to get hold of than the GH/KH+ route (and can only see the 1 type), and the GH/KH+ route is easier anyway but it means you will be left with the GH+, though you probably still use that in the crystal shrimp tank so won't be a complete waste?? You may be right anyway that the KH isn't important so maybe wait and see if someone comes back with that info at this stage? https://www.pro-shrimp.co.uk/water-treatment/1280-dennerle-kh-elixir-4001615016765.html I am sitting here typing this to avoid the weekly task of culling 2 shrimps, it gets harder each week and I can't see any I want to get rid of as I only have pretty (adult) ones left from what I can see................... Simon