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Hello folks, This question is regarding my other shrimp tank, which is 10 months old now and 2.5 gallon. It only has two amanos and one blue bolt who is as old as the tank plus however old it was when I bought it. (I used to have more shrimp, but they died off due to overfeeding and water pollution) The Amanos seems to be doing fine and generally appear well fed, but less lively. The blue bolt seems to be slowing down and spends most of its time standing around or slowly digging thru the substrate. I'm not sure if this is just due to old age, or over / under feeding or unbalanced diet. A few other things things: Water parameters still test OK. I can't ever get finite nitrate readings even when dosing a little all-in-one fertilizer. PH is upper 6's, which is higher than my newer tank that uses the same water and substrate. (Oh, maybe substrate is getting depleted?) GH=5-6, but there is a little more "extra" TDS over the the TDS of my input water. (OK, this might be due to ferts) The moss tree is overgrown and now there is a big clump of moss in the center that blocks a lot of the light. Some floating plants. 15% water change once every 1-2 weeks, but I haven't been doing any gravel vac. The Dwarf hairgrass is yellowing and slowly dying off in areas. Sometimes it is because the shrimp dig it up and chew at the roots, or maybe it isn't getting enough light? I use to feed the shrimp every 3 days, but now that interval has been getting longer. Even if I haven't fed them for 5 days, they still don't care to come out for the food. I think maybe the "plants are winning"(?) because there used to be biofilm growth on the front glass and now there isn't any more? Nitrates are always at zero and there doesn't appear to be much algae growth. I wonder if I should do some moss trimming and floating plant removal, or maybe gravel vac, or just leave things alone?

I forgot to mention I use UNS controsoi, which is little balls around 2mm in size. It probably grows a layer of biofilm because all my shirmp like to graze on it and roll the little grains over to pick at all side of it. It is very easy to gravel vac and usually removes a bit of "mulm" (I think it's called that?) .

I haven't put any in yet, my tank is only 16 litres, using one spoon is way too much, and I don't think using it everyday as instructed is not recommended. Thanks for the advice.

The instructions have you dose way too much. BActer AE is both bacteria food for shrimp, and also some other nutrients to help more bacteria grow. So the point is to dose, let the shrimp eat some of it, and wait a while for more to grow later. If you dose too much you will pollute the water. I agree with Simon that you should use a tiny dab, and not their scoop size.

As far as figuring out your remineralizing schedule.... I would recommend going by GH and KH *FIRST*. Get it to the parameters you want, then measure the TDS. After that, you can go by the TDS and the GH and KH should be within range, as long as the TDS meter is clean and calibrated. ?