03/26/2025
Because I field the question pretty frequently. I thought I'd answer/explain my Caridina setups. I use biomedia bags filled with active soil in front of my filter output for buffering, much like a cost/space-effective UGF.
My substrate is crushed lava w/ active soil sprinkled in to fill voids and provide "working" surface area. pH stays stable at 5.7 using Brightwell Volcanit soil. On average, a 2cup bag of soil lasts for about 8 months before reset, and resetting soil is a 5 minute process using this method. The lava acts as a full layer of biomedia, allowing ample surface area for bacterial growth that never needs to be disturbed with invasive resets. You can see the bag in the top left of this photo, suspended from the tank rim with solid stainless steel wire.
This is all to say; once you understand the theory of what your shrimp need, that you can safely experiment and simplify to suit your needs, even if it makes a lot of the purists cringe at times 😅.
