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I just go with my tap water, and add stuff to get the pH where I want it. I don't chase GH and KH, they just come with the pH. If your water is hard, add some leaves or driftwood. If your water is soft, add some crushed coral in a form where it can be removed. Easy as.

I agree with this person

Been a while since I visited this thread! about this tank The plants are still not looking as good as the other tanks and the whole thing looks drab still, apart from the fish. The fish are doing well with 11 of the 12 mosquito rasbora still surviving, the one that died was withhin a day of getting them. I loved the killifish until a few weeks ago................ he would come out to be fed every morning but I scared him when doing some maintenance a while ago and now he spends 100% of his time hiding, I have seen he is alive but nothing coaxes him out now? They must be very nervous fish??? Anyway, back to shrimps, I had a couple of red steel survive until we had a hot week a month ago that wiped those out, but there were only a couple at that stage anyway. I have ordered a batch of Yellow King Kong to try in the tank as these are very cheap so I can test whether the tank has settled now, and whether postal service is working properly yet. I'm not a fan of YKK (and judging by price I guess not many others are keen either) but they are really cheap so if it doesn't work because of post or tank, not much lost. If all goes well then I may buy some more taiwan bees but that is a way off as I would want to be totally happy all is now well. The shrimp should arrive tomorrow, I told the seller not to bother sending any high grade as they are testers??? Simon

Only thing to be careful of is that at some point you'll need to breed back to a totally different line. I'm talking like buy a carbon rili shrimp from a seller you've never heard of. Otherwise with all that inbreeding, your cool tuxedo line will become a weak unhealthy tuxedo line. Super excited to see what you're gonna get!

I guess select for certain traits you find especially pleasing. Choose your favourite fish, work out what you like about them, then select a group of fish that have that trait. I know for me, my black bars have blue/white dorsals, and one fish has a beautiful blue dorsal with black polka dots. I love that trait, so I'm going to try to breed him with my females (once I work out what species each of my females are - I keep all my endler juvies from diff parents and species together). Probably something that could be selected. As far as I'm aware, black bar endlers are a hybrid, but I believe they may have a much higher percentage of endler in them than some other hybrids.

The only way I can answer that is to use the proper shrimp GH/KH+ with RO water. If your balance is out and you start using the proper RO and GH/KH+ it will very slowly adjust to where it (all paraeters) should be. It would obviously happen quicker if you do a huge or complete water change but that can cause a new set of problems, and as your shrimps seem to have settled down the slower change will be safer I think! Smon

Aim for pH, and don't worry too much about what the KH is. If it takes KH of 1 to get your tank to pH 7.4, then that is what KH should be.