Review on U P Aqua D 550 Shrimp Sand by Josue Porter

I bought several packs of UP Aqua Shrimp Substrate for a couple of aquariums (20 Long PFR/10 PRL) as I am new to the market and have had some rave reviews. Here in the US we don't get many of the substrates available in Hong Kong, Japan and Europe due to import restrictions and a general lack of importers. has not given. Small 1mm grains are easy for shrimp to play with, and some of my PFRs love to dig into them while feeding. The reason they can interact with it so strongly is entirely due to the light weight of the grains. It's frustrating to plant something that will float without using inertial weights, including java ferns that "walk" around the tank in the current at night without them. Run a few fingers through the water and create a current, and small grains of black sand will be scattered everywhere. The pH buffering ability is virtually non-existent unless you fill 1/5 of the tank with 10G, which wasn't my primary concern as I use a 5 stage RO/DI anyway. Tested with tap water and bottled grocery store water and found no significant pH buffering. No ammonia spike was detected, which is good. That being said, as long as you don't rely on it to do anything other than sit idle, it'll look incredible in a small desktop nano. In that aspect I gave it 3 stars just for looks and it didn't give me any significant haze issues. I will be keeping it in several aquariums but can't say I'm willing to pay the same amount for an inactive substrate again. There are significantly better values here (double the product, the buffer is actually 6.5 and costs half the price).