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Best Substrate For RCS?

Jafooli

Jafooli

Member
Joined
21 May 2013
Messages
231
Location
Kent
Hi

I need some advice as my girlfriend is struggling with keeping Cherry shrimp alive, let alone getting any to breed, so far her Fluval Ebi has been nothing but bad luck since she purchased it nearly a year ago.

She is about to purchase her 4th batch of RCS ( not quite yet ) but one member mentioned in the sale/wanted section that it could be because of the Fluval Stratum that we are having such bad luck, so I did some quick research and see some people are in the same boat, aka there breeding slowed down, less baby shrimp survived, and the overall survival rates wasn't great with the fluval stratum substrate. Then other things I read were along the lines off, you only ever hear the negatives with any substrate, and mostly these are people who are not experienced with keeping shrimp... so I have no idea and hope someone can just answer a couple of questions and put us in the right direction.

My girlfriend wants a black substrate so its a bit harder to find a inert one, especially as one topic on here, mentions he had black dye leaking from it, even though it said inert etc... so basically we have found:

Limpopo Black Sand which I read is not that nice looking.
Ebi Gold

Can someone recommend which would be best? I will also list her water parameters as obviously that will play a roll in the choice which leads me to the Ebi Gold.

I see it buffers PH which imo would be a good thing because of our current high PH, but it also buffers the GH to 4-5, well mine is 12 GH, if we went down the Ebi Gold route, will I need to start learning about adding supplements to the water, to increase GH or KH etc if it did buffer it to low? or should it keep it steady around the 4-5, anything above should still be ok for cherry shrimp, I just don't want it to drop to low.

Obviously the plan for her was to keep the easiest shrimp around, and then maybe work her way up, I can now see that's going to take ages, we cant even keep the hardest shrimp around alive, but if the Cherry shrimp somehow do survive in the Ebi gold, its just a note that she may then slowly work her way to say CRS, which would be great. So if we went down the Limpopo route this could be more of a problem due to high ph, here is our water parameters.

Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 30ppm
TDS: 252
PH: 8
GH: 12
KH: 9

Sorry for making a short question longer than needed, Its quite annoying to see my girlfriend spend loads of money on a shrimp tank etc, and I'm the one who told her I will help her as I have a fair amount of knowledge with basic water parameters, although I wouldn't know how to raise or lower them lol as there is no need for me to learn that yet as we are still struggling with RCS, from what I read RCS are like the goldfish in a pond and can suit a wide range of parameters which we do qualify for and are apparently the amateur/beginner shrimp, please help.
 
How frequent are you doing water changes? Red cherry shrimp are very tolerant of water parameters, so that's unlikely to be the issue.
 
When they were alive we were doing a 20% water change each week, I didn't do nothing special with the water aka leave it to stand for a day. I guess this time around I was thinking of doing a 10% water change each week instead. Should I leave the water to stand for a day? When I do a water change the TDS does increase by about 50.

Do you think the Fluval Stratum is not the cause then?
 
Its a strange coincidence but I have experienced something similar recently.

I had a breeding group of cherries in my fluvial spec v. After a few batches of shrimplets I added a bag of planting stratum because the original substrate wasn't deep enough for the plants. Since doing so the original fry numbers have diminished completely and the adults are yet to breed again! 20% a week w/c too here.
 
If your tap water is giving you such a big increase in TDS you want to be thinking about using RO water(remineralised).That way you will have more chance keeping things stable.Cheers Mark.
 
This is odd indeed, Not to say it is the Fluval Stratum as I have no idea hence why I am here for help, but as someone who only has owned Fluval filters and Fluval tanks, it was already surprising enough to learn the filter that came with the Fluval Ebi was inadequate as I needed to put tights around the intake as apparently the Ebi filter sucks in the shrimplets and kills them :O

I didn't understand how a tank designed for breeding shrimp would have this problem, but that's only a small niggle as we just packed it with filter sponge before we purchased any shrimp instead of tights that became clogged fast, but since we've had the tank we've had nothing but deaths, and not one shrimp has ever been berried, if it is the Fluval Stratum, I guess no body knows... then that is really frustrating.

But I honestly cant understand why me and my girlfriend are having these shrimp die on us, =\ I can only hope that people on here can help us solve the problem, what should we do? should we purchase the Ebi Gold?

Hey mark, regarding TDS, I presumed the 300 mark was suitable for cherry shrimp? I believe the bucket of water is around 270 TDS but with dechlor added it rises to around 300 and at end of the week the overall TDS is around 250.
 
Usually over the course of the week the TDS will increase in a tank due to feeding,ferts,waste and supplements added to the tank.But in yours it decreases.Is there anything in the tank making this happen?Shrimp do not like to much change(temp,ph,TDS etc).They do like it stable.Cheers Mark
 
Strange, the tank is so simple and basic in regards to the scape. Couple of plants, piece of bog wood, so I guess not.

I can understand the concept of what your saying lol, but have no idea why mine is decreasing. I try not to overfeed, we keep it clean as possible, the tank get's a lot of evaporation on the Ebi glass lid, is there not nothing in the water that can just be evaporating? or the plants using some of the nutrients in the tap water? which is then decreasing the TDS?

We didn't really want to go down the RO road, only because the idea was to start from the bottom, and then get more technical, I just presumed cherry shrimp were the hardiest they came, regarding shrimp. I believe everything else in the tank is stable, so how likely do you think our problem is TDS? if it is, I guess there's nothing we can do. I can't see my girlfriend going down that road, after the luck she has had, if we was investing in CRS then I can see why but that's not going to happen as we cant keep RCS.

That's kind of annoying if that is the issue, =\ if people's TDS rised? you say from food etc, surely the shrimp would dislike that as much as it decreasing? if not they would hate the increase in TDS more?
 
No I can understand that you wanted to start with a basic shrimp set up.I would like to know what is responsible for the TDS drop.Maybe someone will come along with an answer.In my Sakura nano after W/C I have a TDS of about 180 after a week it is about 195-200.It is by know means perfect but have had numerous babies:)and some losses to :(
 
Cheers Mark, I do hope its not the TDS as that would be disappointing but I don't know, I cant even keep shrimp alive lol, its annoying especially as I did all my research for her and presumed all our water parameters were ideal for cherry shrimp, well maybe the PH could be a tad lower, which the Ebi gold would achieve, but what's the point if the substrate is not the problem, but it is strange that many people have reported problems with the Fluval stratum.

I can only presume the TDS drops as we have never had more then 10 shrimp, so its hardly any feeding to what it would be with someone with say 40-50 shrimp, and also I can only guess any nutrients in the tap water the plants use, as my main tank rises when I dose EI but in the morning its lower again, which I presume is from the plants using it, but my main tank is like 400-600 TDS from my ei dosing lol, I guess the shrimp would bounce out of that tank lol, even though I've read people have kept RCS in them ranges, I've read a lot about RCS surviving stupid water readings, hard to believe them story's.
 
Just looking back at your previous posts there is one other thing that maybe could be a factor,that is the PH.You posted your PH at 8 which is what I have seen written as max PH for RCS.I personally would not feel comfortable keeping them in a tank with such hard water.How long have you been able to keep them for before they die?Do you still have any in the tank?Have you seen evidence of moulting?Cheers Mark.
 
Hey ya, yeah I've had many successful moults.

So the first 10 yellow baby shrimp, probably 6 out of 10 reached adult size, then 2 would die each month..... the same pattern with the 2nd batch of 10 Red cherry shrimp, once again all were babies and many reached adult size... the 3rd patch I would say maybe 8 out 10 reached adult size, and lasted the longest.. just no shrimp ever became berried, and then slowly a couple died each month again.. We've only ever had about 2 trapped moults.

So the strangest thing is we have one cherry shrimp in there now and he has been in there since at least September. I've seen his moults laying around and he is always around each day eating etc, hardly ever feed the tank now, maybe once a week just to give him some iodine from the food if that's correct, strange how each batch has had a tuff guy who has lasted longer then all the others.

I removed the wood a couple of days ago, to clean some BBA, so the ph was 8 yesterday, but I would hope the wood might drop this a tad, and we also did have some almond leafs once, which also I think lower the ph? if anything Its probably always 7.8-8 with the wood.
 
I would say that there is a good reason for not having berried shrimp.The water parameters not being correct for breeding due to the water being too hard.In my opinion around 6.8 to 7.2 would be my idea of ideal PH for RCS.Some people will probably disagree but I would be happy with around 7 PH and 6/7 GH.I think we could have an answer for the berried shrimp problem.Cheers Mark.
 
Hey Lindy,

That's what I thought as-well, but as mentioned above, if I did buy this substrate would I start needing to adjust GH KH? or should it still keep me in good ranges... aka if by some miracle it lowered our GH to 3, I didn't want to start adding supplements to raise it, especially when I'm not that experienced yet.

I do not want to be the one to blame when all the shrimp die after she spends a fortune lol, and I miss dose a supplement :L best to give it a few months first.

Otherwise I think she is more than happy to go with the Ebi gold.
 
Thanks for the help, I really do appreciate it. I know Lindy basically already told me the Ebi gold should be fine, but I needed to make this thread to be sure, and obviously there was other matters to address, for one as you say Mark I don't want it to drop to low... and obviously if it dropped to much then its a bit more pressure to get it all right, and if we lost shrimp again because of my mistakes, I don't think she will be buying any again lol, and I want her shrimp to succeed just as much as her if not more, as I do want to help her try new shrimp, but its one step at a time, and I always start from the beginning to try and avoid mistakes.
 
Oh one last more important question, for a 30 litre tank, will she only need one bag of Ebi Gold, please say yes lol. I presume a 5 litre bag is around 5kg so should be more than enough? I also think she wants the brown ebi gold. I presume there all roughly the same.
 
I would say 1 bag of 5 kg would do it mate!I just used about or just under 4Kg to do a 20L cube but with 5cm depth.So I guess you just put the whole bag in and you will probably find a nice 4ish cm covering should be pretty good for buffering the water.Cheers Mark
 
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