If you have been adding fish food continuously throughout the cycling, then your fishless cycling is most likely completed.
If you get the same reading for the hardness of your tap water, you have fairly hard water if I am not mistaken. Most test kits should have instructions telling you what range your reading is in. ex: very soft, soft, hard, very hard, etc. Check the box or the bottle of your test kit for details.
Cherry shrimps have very low bio load. As long as you do not overfeed them. Leftover food can produce more ammonia than the shrimps themselves.
Some tips for having a shrimp only tank.
1. It is the best to have some fine leafed real plants in the tank. ex: A big chunk of Java Moss
Your shrimps will love it for hiding and it will provide a food source for them.
2. The best filter for a cherry shrimp tank would be a sponge filter. If you are not using a sponge filter, it is the best to use a fine textured pre-filter on the intake of your filter. So the shrimps won't be sucked into your filter. The baby shrimps are puny.
3. A dozen or so shrimps are a good start. If nothing goes wrong, you will have over 100 of them in 3~4 months.
4. It is the best to feed sinking food. I have tried various fish food, and found that
Omega One shrimp sinking pellets work well.
You can also feed
Hikari Algae Wafer but not until you have 100+ shrimps since the algae wafer are big.
5. All these dwarf shrimps will eat algae. As long as your tank isn't overrun by algae, leave them to the shrimps as a food source.
6. Once the aquarium is cycled, all you need to do is 20~30% partial water change for a shrimp only tank. They are very sensitive to changes in the environment, so it is the best to avoid larger water change. Be extremely careful when you remove water from the aquarium, or some shrimps might be accidentally removed too.
