How would you guys work with this parameters?
What are your goals in terms of plants & growth?
My tap is KH 0-1, GH 0-2
Water board adjusts pH to ~7, but my tanks run ~ pH 6 - 6.5
My goal is a tank that grows slow/steady - eg, I planted Tropica's 1-2- Grow Micranthemum 'Monte Carlo' 10days ago, no melt & at this rate of growth, should have a thin green "cover" in a month but another month before there's any density to the carpet (I pushed very small portions fairly deep into substrate, using a single pot to cover an L shaped area ~30 cm x 50cm & 10 cm wide ie a lot more brown than green to start ...)
I use a single Tropica diffuser on a 90cm x 45cm x 52H cm tank (filter is Eheim pro 3 250) & have no problems gassing my fish
😳 - fortunately no losses!
I don't use a pH probe (I wasn't about to start compromising my dead simple water changes) or drop checker (did buy one) but just monitor fish/shrimp/plants ...
As KH is so low & tanks receive significant ambient light, I choose to run CO2 24/7, "lights off" rate is low & increases when "lights on".
I recently rescaped this tank & layered Tropica Growth Substrate, thin layer of Carib Sea aragonite sand, Tropica Aqua Soil - no idea how this will work but I'd tried using Seachem Equilibrium (likely better suited to your purposes than the alkaline buffer) ... couldn't quite dissolve the powder before adding to tank, so just dumped it in, then watched in surprise as an Oto gobbled up the white bits, then sadness as Oto was clearly uncomfortable later & DOA in the morning.
Generally fish will just taste & spit this sort of stuff out, no idea if this behavior is typical of otos (I syphoned out any solids I could find after seeing this behavior); next I tried
Seachem's Aquavitro line carbonate which I like but its rather expensive when doing frequent water changes ...
If you're doing EI dosing, you can likely just incorporate potassium bicarbonate into the scheme.
(I'm using Tropica fertilizers at this time)
Shrimp appear to have no problems moulting/breeding despite the very soft water but I do feed frozen brine shrimp, bloodworms, daphnia.