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Update: My water temperature was read wrong.... it was not 82 haha but instead it is 72.. (which is better right) My PH is still 7.6 after adding some mopani driftwood that i boiled for 3 hours and soaked for 1 hour. MY ammonia appears to be closer to 0ppm,if not between 0 and .25pm. (definitely not .25 anymore) My nitrites are still at 0. My nitrates have risen to what I think might be 30-40ppm from 20ppm. The shrimp seem to acting normal! eating and loving the driftwood! I added the fluval cycle yesterday as well. Thank you all for the help so far and I am open to hearing more advice ?

wait wait Do NOT add driftwood unless you know it is a kind that is shrimp safe and also free of pesticides and chemicals Second, boil the driftwood at least 1/2 hours in distilled water so that it doesn't suddenly release a whole bunch of things in the water. Third, do not attempt to use this to push around the pH value, especially if you don't know what is the KH value is. You don't want sudden pH changes. Use something a bit more gentle like Indian Almond leaf, which you can immediately take out if you overdo it. Fourth get the API liquid test kits for Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate and test every day. Fifth, get something like Seachem Prime that can protect against ammonia. If you ever see ammonia or nitrite, then dose this approx 1 drip per gallon per day. If you don't see any, then still dose something like 1 drip per 2 gallons per day anyway, until you are sure that the cycle is established. You can look up the instructions and dosing guidelines for Seachem's fish-in-tank cycle guide. (Except here you will be using Fluval cycle instead of Seachem Stability)

Yes, just right. That's good news. It looks like there is some bacteria in the tank and it's processing the ammonia. Nitrates are building up however, but that can be reduced with water changes. Continue using the Fluval Cycle at every water change, ie. weekly. Just keep working on reducing the pH slowly.

That temperature is perfect! The wood and any Indian Almond leaves will be a slow (and that is what you want) PH reduction. It looks to be going well, the main thing is to change things very slowly if everything is otherwise ok! If the shrimp are active and investigating that is a good sign! Simon

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I'm probably the wrong one to answer this???? Do as JayC stated and only use half dose every 2 days of the fluval cycle. I believe you only need to do a water change if the ammonia goes too high (so remove some ammonia)! I imagine that that product does add ammonia as that is the start of the cycle? The other reason for doing a water change is if the PH drops too low (below 6.5ish) but I doubt this is likely with your high PH reading, at this point anyway! Soil substrates usually lower/buffer the PH but I assume you are using sand or gravel, which is usual with cherry shrimp? The Indian almond leaves and driftwood should very slowly reduce the PH, though the driftwood isn't yet in the tank of coarse! Hopefully the tank will have already cycled by the time the driftwood is ready to go in the tank anyway. Simon

Yes add this. Just give it a short soak in a bathtub or something beforehand, depending on the size of the piece. With shrimp every fortnight is usually better. During the cycle (first month) you can do weekly 10% changes though. And Simon gave some good advice about parameters. Only thing is 7.6 is the highest on your kit yeah? If so (and of course I could be wrong, let me know if you have tested high range pH) then it could be higher than 7.6 in actuality. Can we get some pics of the current setup? Cheers, Crabby

I may have missed something but aren't the parameters JayC quoted for Bee shrimp, but these are cherry shrimp??? Hopefully with only 2 shrimps they will survive the cycle as 2 won't make a lot of ammonia! You should try and cool the tank a bit as JayC states, you are pretty close to the limit. With Cherry shrimp you can use dechlorinated tap water, I do. The IDEAL parameters for cherry shrimp are, PH 6.5 - 7.5 TDS 150 - 250 GH 6 - 8 KH 2 - 4 Don't get too fixated if one isn't exactly in this range (ie your PH should be fine, same as mine) or where you want it, as cherry shrimp are fairly adaptable, but if you get measurements we can check those for you and let you know whether any action is required? Mine live with nitrates of 25-50 for instance, and have done for years - I am not saying they should, just that they can live outside perfect parameters. Again, if you are using tap water it is unlikely ALL the parameters are good but the thing to do is not try and get EVERY one right, especially with tap water, and if you do want to change something do it VERY slowly! Tap water is also unreliable, every time I test mine it is different? The only way around this is to use RO water and shrimp mineraliser, but I have kept mine in tap water for 5+ years ith never a problem so unless the tap water is way off I would carry on with the tap water. If you let us know the parameters we can check if it is likely to work longer term? Welcome to shrimp keeping and this forum! Simon

Shrimp Keepers Forum welcomes Ilovepraws86. Please feel free to browse around and get to know others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. View Member regards, skfadmin