danielt

They bred fine. It's the hardness that's more important as far as I noticed with mine.

I'm from Romania, somewhere in the Eastern Europe

I noticed that myself. IMHO the commercial products just provide confort from ease of use. Not that they're using some hard to get, expensive, substances. Calcium and Magnesium can be found pretty much everywhere. Dialing in a mix that provides a nice balance between hardness and TDS is the hard part.

For instance, the SaltyShrimp products I bought from a guy that went out of business seem to be pretty good from the experience i have so far with them. However, I lost the only source in my country for these products. Ordering them online costs two-to-three times more than what I used to pay for them. The bulk is in shipping, mind you. Unless I get to make a split order with someone else it will be counter productive for me to order them online.

The only other product for remineralizing RO water available in my country is JBL AquaDur. Which is not that good to use with shrimp, Neos, maybe. But I prefer not using it at all near my shrimp tanks.

I did tinkered with CaSO4, CaCL and MgSO4 before, however, I didn't got the tests I do now. Was thinking on making my own mix and try to get some numbers out of the SaltyShrimp products. Afterwards, I plan on reproducing the same numbers with my homemade mix.

Trace minerals I can get out of cosmetic clay products, that's where I get my montmorillonite

Same for me, using Firefox 27.

I don't want to hijack this thread. Please let me know if I'm off topic with this. Are there any recipes out there on how to make a remineralizing mix suitable for shrimp using CaSO4 or CaCl and MgSO4?

I'll try to decode what I can from SaltyShrimp products. At the moment, I don't have a clear idea of the Ca/Mg ratio you need to reach and what quantity of each ingredient is needed to reach it.

However, I do have a TDS meter, Ca test, Mg test and gH test. Just curious if someone already has some numbers on this.

Neos tolerate high pH. I keep Rili in water as high as pH 8.4. If the value does not swing they will be fine.

I don't agree with the statement "pH is softness" since hard or soft water is determined by hardness, not pH. You can have either way, low/high hardness, regardless of what pH you have. The reverse is also true, pH can be either way irrespective of hardness.

kH controls the pH because the chemical reaction that carbonates regulate in water controls the amount of hydrogen ions produced. pH is affected by the quantity of free hydrogen ions present in the water. The more free hydrogen ions present in the water the lower pH gets turning water into an acid. The less free hydrogen ions the higher the pH turning water into a base.
 
The most common naturally occurring cause is CO2 that diffuses in water which from this process it will produce free hydrogen ions that carbonates (kH) regulate.

Now, kH is good for any aquatic creature as it will buffer large pH swings. However, most shrimps we like to keep, mostly Caridinas, prefer water with low kH as their natural environment is low in carbonates. I suspect due to a large quantity of tannins and organic substances that get dissolved in the water from decomposing vegetable debris and leaves which eat away carbonates.

kH can be reduced with peat, peat moss, blackwater extract, IAL, alder cones, and any leaf rich in tannins. But don't expect magic if you need to reduce more than 1-2 german degrees of carbonate hardness.

Some of my shrimps

I accidentally made something similar to what these flakes do. Put some mulberry leaves tea bought from the nature shop in a jar, added some bacterial starter (sera nitrivec) into the mix and after one week i got some large fungus colonies growing on the surface. Took the white stuff out and fed it to my red rili shrimp. In 20 minutes the whole tank was munching on this stuff.

Hi everyone!

Just stumbled on this fine forum looking for a diy recipe of RO remineralizer and decided to register.

I've been keeping f/w shrimp for the past year or so with things intensifying recently when I started my shrimp only shelves. Got an opportunity to buy some special shrimps and products from someone who tried to open a shrimp business in my country.

Currently keeping lots of neos in the form of Red/Blue Rili, Sakura, Yellow Neon, RCS. Caridinas like CRS/CBS, Hinomaru, Snow, Smilie, Amanos and some BKK Panda and Red Wine. I also got like 6 pink ramshorns and 5 Cambarellus.

Looking to expand my knowledge of keeping shrimp and also share what I learned from mistakes in the past year.