Adding tap water will almost certainly add KH to your tank. Again, I suggest you measure your GH (and KH) so you know where you're at approximately - you really just need to measure occasionally, but they are good parameters to know when keeping shrimps especially.
Hi @pat1cp No problem. Not super critical either way... plenty of people keep both and are having both thriving and breeding in the same tank - but it seems a good idea to slant the water parameters more towards what is preferred by the CRS rather than the RCS which seems more adaptable to typical CRS conditions rather than the other way around. Congrats on your RCS success btw! 🙂
Yup, I use a 10 ml test tube, instead of the 5 ml tube that comes with the API GH/KH Test Kit. The 10 ml tube gives what is akin to a +/- 0.5 resolution. At least it narrows the uncertainty. For measurements in the 4 and above range its perfect, but it becomes tricky to measure if your down in the 1-2 range, where I am at with my KH, as the color and reaction gets very faint and subtle in a 10 ml tube.
Totally agree with this!
@The_storm Exciting! Congratulations! I am in the process of slowly tweaking my water a bit for a future introduction of CRS to my shrimp tank (currently have various colors of RCS) - essentially knocking the TDS down to the 150 ppm range from 210-230 in the past. I am currently hovering at 190 ppm - still a bit too high for the CRS I am getting which are mostly raised in waters around 150-160ppm... I assume you maintained GH at 5/6 and KH at 0.5/1, but what about your TDS? Where is that at? also what's your water temperature?
Very true.
As a blanket statement, for shrimps in particular, this is most certainly incorrect. You got to be in the ballpark with your water parameters, but probably nothing more than that. If your Ca and/or Mg content is too low your shrimps wont be able to build their exoskeleton and molt successfully...if Ca content is too high they wont be able to molt successfully either. Shrimps don't have the same ability for osmotic regulation as fish, so if your TDS is too high (or extremely low) your shrimps wont thrive - and rapid changes to TDS can be lethal as shrimp adapts to change in osmotic pressure very slowly. If your Cu content is too high your shrimps will most likely die etc.
I learnt that from reef keepers in that they top up with fresh, and not salt.
I think thats a real good habit to get into, and i do the same. Although doing it manually is no hardship i would like to set up an auto top up system as i get further along into it.
