Robi

I recently did pull out some elodia that smelled funky. I changed from the little tube I used to a zip tie and sucker.

tank is yellow on ammonia and slightly has nitrates. (10000gal rain water tank) the noodles were fluro white when i put them in there like a lightish brown now and no only rinse in tank water when i do a water change(once a week usually but sometimes half way in week to depending one if anything is high, i can only do about 25% water change with the shrimp i tried a 50% one time alot died ( i always slow feed the water back in from a big jug i have through airline tube so they dont get a shock special last 2-3 months on winter in Australia. there is nitrite around 0 - 0.25 (the colour is hard to tell sometimes), ph is around 6.6 6.8ish I only have the master test kit so i dont have the kh kit

i like the zip ties idea to hold the diy co2 as a solid single unit 🙂

I would say it depends on how picky you are about the perfect look. Personally i just toss it in move it slightly then walk away get a coffee etc then walk back in if I dont like it after time away i change it and keep doing that till i like it. but lava rock(red and black) and seiryu stone are solid picks. dragon stone i think works better in larger tank, as in nano tanks i feels like the gap/holes in the stone are to outer scale

So i have had a shrimp tank for about about 8 months in a 21l(roughly 5.5gal) tank after a lot of rain awhile ago i'm in a endless cycle of ammonia spiking a bit really light green and nitrates hitting into the red 40ppm area. but it gets a little higher i do a little water change comes back abit my biological is obviously converting the ammonia etc maybe its not fast enough of enough media i have sponge and a layer of bio noodles. (i have been lightly dosing with extra prime to keep the ammonia/nitrate locked)