Potassium in Equilibrium

[Libba]

I have pretty soft tap water - around 45 TDS, 2dGH, 0dKH. I was thinking about adding shrimp to my tank and I've read recommendations to have at least 4dGH for most shrimp. I have some Seachem Equilibrium so I was going to add some to my water changes and try to achieve 4-5dGH but just noticed that the product is seems to contain a lot of Potassium. I'm not really sure how to do the math on how much Potassium will be in my water if I use this product so I have a 2 part question:

1. If I add 4 grams of Equilibrium to 20 litres of water, and the product is 23% Soluble Potash, what would the level of Potassium in this water now be in PPM(assuming the level was 0 before adding Equilibrium)?

2. Should I be concerned about any negative impacts on plants or fish if I'm using both Equilibrium and dosing APT complete which adds about 4ppm per dose?

Edit: I'm terrible at math but I'm thinking the Equilibrium would be adding something like 40ppm of Potassium, which seems really high to me based on what I'm currently dosing.

 

[alto]

I’m too lazy to do the math, but Seachem discussion board has a fair number of posts on this (it’s been awhile since I read through them)

I’ve used Seachem Equilibrium and Tropica fertilizers without issue re plants, fish, shrimp
(tap is very soft, similar to yours - while I did play a bit with also adding KH additives, this made for fairly unstable KH and pH, so I didn’t bother re S vaillanti etc in the tank)

Pretty sure there has been a discussion on potassium toxicity on ukaps, but again, been awhile since I followed the topic - looking at online scientific journals, there’s more not finding issues than finding issues at the levels you’re likely to use

I’m currently using Salty Shrimp GH+ (as it’s what the local shrimp seller used) - I’ve not compared Equilibrium (which I have rather a lot of (for no good reason)) with SS GH+

From another forum (from another forum)

someone else has done the research, and I am confident it was one of their product developers from Garlenhaus, Germany:

Bee Shrimp Mineral GH +
Soft Water Mineral GH +
17.88% Calcium
6.76% Magnesium
2, 11% Potassium
0.69% Hydrogen Carbonate
41.50% Chloride
16.91% Sulfate
0.35492% Trace Elements

Note most shrimp breeders will recommend the specialist shrimp products over other general aquarium versions
(I suspect re trace additives or undeclared impurities - there are certainly many archived posts on shrimp forums reporting losses with various additives)

 

[ceg4048]

1. If I add 4 grams of Equilibrium to 20 litres of water, and the product is 23% Soluble Potash, what would the level of Potassium in this water now be in PPM(assuming the level was 0 before adding Equilibrium)?

Hi Libba,
The term "potash" refers to any salt of potassium. So this could be Potassium Carbonate, Potassium Sulfate, Potassium Nitrate and many others. Without knowing which Potassium salt is included an exact concentration cannot be calculated.

Should I be concerned about any negative impacts on plants or fish if I'm using both Equilibrium and dosing APT complete which adds about 4ppm per dose?

I've not heard of any substantiated reports of Potassium toxicity in fish/shrimp.
EI doses large quantities of Potassium via Potassium Nitrate and Potassium Phosphate, and some folks add Potassium Sulfate, so I can attest that there is no toxicity to plants. There is a discussion in the thread Excess of K, Na, Ca, Mg... fact or myth? regarding someone's claim of K toxicity, but again, there are always Potassium witch hunts every few years. It's very trendy to dredge up these types of fear mongering.

Cheers,