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I got a blue reading in the alkalinity reading and there is no blue on the chart. Does anyone know where on the spectrum the blue would land? My water ph is just between neutral and alkaline closer to neutral. Any help would be appreciated, so, thanks in advance.

Hi. It’s me. Again. Lol. And good morning or day to all. Now that I have my new betta and pleco and zebra snail in my tank that has been active since January. I have noticed my water parameter changes. They have been in a week now. I have read to increase the alkalinity to add baking soda……. But of course I am turning to the experts for the confirmation and help. Below is my test strip from this am. Is this an emergency situation that can harm my betta? thanks!!!!!

Hi guys! Full disclosure, I posted a version of this in my local forum but that forum is a whole lot smaller and isn't really a "long-form" discussion type place. I'm really excited to be getting into this hobby and I LOVE discussing it. BUT, I made a big mistake and I'm slightly embarrassed to reveal my carelessness, especially cause I really wanted to do this right. I set up a tank a little over two weeks ago and I added plants a little over one week ago. I bought an ammonia sensor, which read <0.02 ppm and after adding the plants I noticed that there were a lot of tiny pond snails and ramshorn snails in the tank. Over the past week, the snails were looking healthy and seemed to be growing, and the ammonia remained low so I figured the tank was probably cycled. Don't kill me.. I see the error of my ways now. IGNORANTLY thinking my tank was cycled, I went out and bought 3 apple snails and 5 ghost shrimps. I was doing a lot of reading about invertibrates beforehand, and read that low pH can dissolve their shells. I wasn't too worried about this since my water here is moderately hard and tends to be above 7.00. But I also used fluval stratum substrate, which can lower pH. So I decided to go out and get a test kit, mostly to make sure the pH wasn't too low.BUT these are the results I got:GH: 60-120 ppmKH (Ca2+, Mg2+): 0 ppmpH: 6.5Nitrite: 1 ppmNitrate: 20 ppmAmmonia: <0.02 ppmI was horrified to see that my tank that I thought was cycled, actually has nitrite in it! I really wish I would have tested this before putting anything living into the tank. Live and learn... except my snails and shrimps may not live...Anyways, I've been testing the water multiple times a day and doing daily 30% water changes using a 1 x dose of Seachem Prime to dechlorinate the water. I don't have access to filter media from an established tank to speed up the cycling. My nitrite is still at 1ppm unfortunately. This morning, I saw a really interesting video where the youtuber reached out to Seachem Prime to ask the exact dose needed to detoxify ammonia and nitrite.Here's a summary:A 1x dose will detoxify 1 ppm of ammonia and 2 ppm of nitrite, a 5x dose will detoxify 5 ppm of ammonia and 10 ppm of nitrite. A 1x dose is 1 ml per 10 US gal. Here's a link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqio4O3dwKQ&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=TrafishAquatics I realized a problem - I've been adding a 1x dose of Seachem prime based on the volume of the bucket of new water (0.6 mL Seachem Prime for 6 gal bucket, to do a 30% water change of my 20 gal tank). But, to detoxify the nitrite in the tank, I should be calculating the amount of Seachem based off the volume of the tank, not the bucket of new water. So today, I added 0.6 ml of Seachem Prime to dechlorinate the new water in the bucket, then I did the water change, and now I'm about to add another 1.4 ml of Prime directly to the tank. That gives me a total of 2 ml of Seachem prime, which is a 1x dose for my 20 gal tank. I probably could have just added 2 ml of Seachem Prime to the bucket to dechlorinate the water and hope that it detoxifies the nitrite in the tank when I do the water change, but I don't know if that makes it less effective - probably doesn't matter - but I feel that adding the Seachem directly to the tank can't hurt in terms of detoxifying the nitrite. What do you guys think? Also today I didn't feed the snails and shrimps. Does this seem like an ok plan to bring down the nitrite until the cycle is finished? Thank you for your help! I attached a pic of the tank and a pic of two of my snails, which are named Rex and Devin..

My readings are good accept my alkalinity is low. How do I add alkalinity without changing the others?

Is it normal for GH to drop by 1 degree each day in a relatively heavily planted tank...? I have Fluval Stratum Shrimp substrate but I thought it only would affect KH. Current stock is only one nerite snail but I’m hoping to get blue velvet shrimp and sparkling gourami (and potentially some pygmy corydoras depending on how stocking the former goes). I did one dose of Salty Shrimp GH/KH+ the day before yesterday and it boosted GH from 2 to 5 (KH dropped by 1). But today my GH is back down to 2... I’m more concerned about my GH since 2 is pretty low for snails/neos... My KH tends to drop slowly but I can keep it at around 6 or 7 with crushed coral. The crushed coral seems to only affect my pH and KH, unfortunately... I just ordered NilocG GH booster but wasn’t sure if needing to add that or Salty Shrimp on such a regular basis would create too much salt build up. My tap water GH is 4 and KH is 2. My tank has been running for a week and a half. It’s 10 gallons. Water parameters other than GH and KH have been stable: ph 7.4, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 5 (I reached 0 ammonia a couple days ago). I add two pinches of ground up fish food twice a day for ammonia. Thanks!