I've been thinking of the same question and been doing some research recently as I was thinking of setting up a breeding tank for Blue Tigers. I think it depends on your goals: wether you predominately want a planted tank with shrimp, or a shrimp tank with plants
(with the planted tank goal you may compromise 'ideal' conditions e.g. risk of ammonia spike; still a balanced system but just something to consider especially if you like to move plants about). I think as you say it also depends on wether your prepared to strip the the thing down every year.
The Planted Tank with Shrimp
If you want longer term, shrimp friendly alternatives could check out some of the Diana Walsted substrate ideas and go low-tech? Aquasoil Malaya or Akadama are meant to be alright too, quite a few breeders make use of them.
The Shrimp Tank with Plants
After doing some research myself surprisingly it seems that sand is the best option if planning to breed CRS long term without having to change substrate every year. Sand has the following benefits;
- It doesn't contain any of the voodoo water changing properties of the specialist soils which can have negative effects and seems to be a bit of an unknown (the Shirakura Red Bee Sand seems to have mixed reviews as some have found it actually manages to kill shrimp and its PH altering properties) and need changing every year.
- you can have tighter control of the water chemistry with a combo of RO and tap without exhausting the soil
- Easy to clean out the nasties by giving it a stir and easy to replace/refresh
- I don't know if this has any reasoning or foundation but my shrimp seem to love feeding from sand.
With different 'goals' in mind this means I'm using Florabase in my main setup as it could be changed in a year and the focus is the aquascape, whilst in this new setup for Blue Tigers I'll use sand and gravel.
Saying all this though as you know people all have different experiences and aims, but just thought I'd share some of my findings and thoughts
Some lucky gits get their CRS to breed in all sorts of dishwater
Just found an insightful link;
http://www.blue-tiger-shrimp.com/blog/shrimp-soil-2/