100% RO water

You mean without buffering substrate? You have to remineralize if you use 100% RO water.

Yeah I wanna use lava sand collected from a beach. What should I remineralize with? Will this keep the ph low?

Any of the popular remineralizer choices. There's a lot out. As for ph staying stable... It won't. Unless your tap has super stable ph (most aren't) your ph will fluctuate. Why not use buffering substrate with lava sand on top?

Oh, or use a lot of IAL.

I can go with new amazonia but that quits buffering after a while too. I can get a ton of IAL but I really don't like the black water effect. Maybe I should get those new blue neo's everyone's talking about.

They'll eventually die in 0 TDS pure distilled water, pure water is aggressive and will leech minerals out of their bodies over time.

I think many people who dont have usable tap to keep shrimp use 100% R/O and remineralize. If you are referring to TDS, that's something that needs to be raised to upwards of 140+ to sustain these guys.

eco said:

I can go with new amazonia but that quits buffering after a while too. I can get a ton of IAL but I really don't like the black water effect. Maybe I should get those new blue neo's everyone's talking about.

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Yea any buffering substrate will slowly stop buffering. So you'll have that problem regardless.

With IAL, you shouldn't need to put that many that it stains the water tea colored. Since you have RO/DI water with very little KH, a few IAL will go a long way. KH buffers pH. The less of it there is, the easier the pH can change.

I have horrible water, so i have to use pure RO for my shrimp, which i remineralize with mosura mineral plus, but i'm going to be switching to CA+. All this does is raise the gh and tds, not ph or kh. I also have them on amazonia to keep it as stable as i possibly can.

I use 100% DI water. (0 TDS) and remineralize with seachem equilibrium and mosura mineral plus.

Ph is stable 24/7 at 5.6 but I think is because if the UGF with akadama