1. You will need a KH kit too, pH kit is less important, but you probably already have it. The rest is fine.
2. The soil will probably have nutrients for longer, but will not buffer your tank or provide the Ammonia on start up like the Aquasoil does. Not sure on the Mr. Aqua soil but it could be alright? Depending on your parameters you may want an active substrate like Aquasoil (or the Mr. Aqua if it does that too, but IDK really). Also, with dirt you kinda can't do a lot of shifting and rescaping and stuff, cus it will throw a lot of stuff in the water, and shrimp being quite sensitive it may knock em out. I love ADA Aquasoil though so I'm probably super biased in my suggestions hahaha. I would just use one size of the Aquasoil, your tank is pretty small, so you could probably use just a whole bag of the Powder type. Because with replanting and stuff the normal sized Aquasoil will come to the top a bit ruining the aesthetics.
Also, yes with a good substrate dosing becomes a little less necessary. But if you are using CO2, dosing is more or less needed regardless, not so much with low-tech. In low-tech you can get away with infrequent fertilising. The reason why you will still have to dose even with a nutrient rich substrate, is that they don't provide everything a plant needs, usually they lack in K and Micros. But honestly dosing won't really hurt your shrimp, people dose EI levels, whilst breeding shrimp, provided they also do water changes to reset their parameters each week. You can still dose to keep your plants happy and not worry about the shrimp. Stick with a leaner dosing routine if you are really worried about your shrimp (PPS-Pro etc.).
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2. The soil will probably have nutrients for longer, but will not buffer your tank or provide the Ammonia on start up like the Aquasoil does. Not sure on the Mr. Aqua soil but it could be alright? Depending on your parameters you may want an active substrate like Aquasoil (or the Mr. Aqua if it does that too, but IDK really). Also, with dirt you kinda can't do a lot of shifting and rescaping and stuff, cus it will throw a lot of stuff in the water, and shrimp being quite sensitive it may knock em out. I love ADA Aquasoil though so I'm probably super biased in my suggestions hahaha. I would just use one size of the Aquasoil, your tank is pretty small, so you could probably use just a whole bag of the Powder type. Because with replanting and stuff the normal sized Aquasoil will come to the top a bit ruining the aesthetics.
Also, yes with a good substrate dosing becomes a little less necessary. But if you are using CO2, dosing is more or less needed regardless, not so much with low-tech. In low-tech you can get away with infrequent fertilising. The reason why you will still have to dose even with a nutrient rich substrate, is that they don't provide everything a plant needs, usually they lack in K and Micros. But honestly dosing won't really hurt your shrimp, people dose EI levels, whilst breeding shrimp, provided they also do water changes to reset their parameters each week. You can still dose to keep your plants happy and not worry about the shrimp. Stick with a leaner dosing routine if you are really worried about your shrimp (PPS-Pro etc.).
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