As others said before: if you use tape: stick with it, and don't remove or change it halfway.
Also, the Chinese 12K before the Shapton 16K seems superfluous.
And indeed: feedback from the water on the ceramic is pricesless, and one of the reasons I prefer using the Norton 1K over the DMTD8C. I also don't like the scraping I feel on DMT.

Congratulations on getting good results