I have ordered online or purchased locally a variety of plants, shrimp and some Otocinclus for the 25 and 55 gallon tanks.

The 25 gallon is lightly planted with has 15 tiger shrimp (Caridina cantonensis sp. “Tiger” http://www.planetinverts.com/Tiger%20Shrimp.html) 1 mystery snail, and 2 Otocinclus cats and 5 green shrimp.

The 55 is moderately planted and has 8 Black Kuhli Loaches, 1 Mystery Snail, 5 Green Shrimp, 3 Otos, 6 guppies,  6 African Dwarf Frogs, and 5 tiger shrimp. Also in this tank are 2 fry nets which I am using to keep the berried shrimp and more rapidly grow a few different plants.

I wake up in the morning and the 25 gallon has almost completely crashed. All but  3 tigers and 2 greens were dead. I tranferd the survivors to the 55 gallon tank, but 3 more died in the next 24 hours.

It took much investigating but it turns out the reason for the mass deaths was related to the water hardness and the natural ph buffering of the water in the area, Since the shrimp prefer a pH around 6.8 I was slowly bringing my water down to 6.8. When I had finally reached that point after several days of regular dosing I was excited, overnight the pH went from 6.8 to 8.2 and I believe that is what cause the shrimp to die.

Lesson Learned, time to find an R/O device.