Equilibrium 600gram

*** Update 07/13/117 *** Back for more. *** Original review *** We have had an aquarium in our house for almost 25 years, ranging from 20 gallons to 110 gallons, and have had both fresh and saltwater setups. About 15 years ago we purchased our first Boesemani Rainbow and got hooked on this type of fish! Brilliant coloration from freshwater fish; now we have Boesemani, Turquoise, Banded, Red, and Praecox (neon) rainbows that have grown to about three inches in length. Our current tank is a 72 gallon bow-front which we fill with RO'd tap water. It has a bio-ball based biological filtration system and also a pond pump that runs water through a UV light canister to manage algae. About 2 years ago we moved into a new-to-us house, and within a couple month started to experience an oddity with the tank... no matter how much sodium bicarbonate we gently mixed in, we could not get the PH testing kit to read much above 6... and then we started to lose fish. Local aquarium staff were very nice to talk to, and they suggested that our issue was our tap water; they said that our county tap water has 0.5 - 1.0 dGH (General Hardness of about 17 ppm) and that rainbows like 10 - 15+ dGH (180+ ppm). They also noted that the RO process can also drive down GH, and that super low GH levels (or, conversely, super high GH) can cause false PH testing results. They recommended that we immediately cycle out 30% of our water and use Equilibrium to focus on getting GH up. I use a 5 gallon pail to do water changes, and the RO water pours into the pail as produced. We put the equilibrium into the pail with the new RO water, and stir aggressively with a long wooden spoon until fairly well mixed in. We cycled 30% of the water each week until the Equilibrium stabilized GH at around 200 ppm and PH settled in at about 7. As GH came up to around 100 ppm, the PH test results jumped to 8... so those good folks at the aquarium were right on!! Now we have gone back to normal water cycling and using a little bit of Equilibrium to maintain balance. For the last 20 months our rainbows have been quite happy and their colors outstanding once again. We even had a surprise birth... what looks like the fry from the turquoise and banded rainbows. We caught one in time to keep him from becoming breakfast, and kept him in a pen for about three months. Now he is about 1.5 inches long and has been released to live with the others. Truly amazing. Guess we must have lived in places where tap water had medium hardness as we had never run into this issue and had never tested tanks for GH before. Glad we know what to do now. Seachem Equilibrium is our friend. If you have a similar need, we highly recommend it.

Great for adding the minerals that my RO takes out of the water

I have a lot of Java Ferns that grew big with help of CO2. After I stopped pumping CO2, they started developing black spots on their leaves and pretty much dying. I didn’t want to go back to CO2 system, and wanted to keep my tank low tech. So, I tried many alternatives like liquid CO2, various ferts, nothing helped. This product did! Used it once, then in 2 weeks my Java Ferns started growing like I resumed my CO2 injections. I keep adding it with each water change, plants love it.

Plants love it judge pearling after a water change BUT pushes the potassium up too much so I have not used it for a long time now to get my K down.

Great for adding minerals Back to aquarium ro water

I've been in an out of fishkeeping over the years with varied success. My goal this time around was to maintain a heavily planted community aquarium favoring Amazon river fish species predominately. I decided to set up my 75 gallon tank with the plants first to see how they'd fair before stocking it with fish, since that's where I've been the most challenged in the past. Water comes out of the tap on the harder side here at 9 GH, 12 KH and 7.6+ PH. Figuring that was part of my problem in the past, I bought a reverse osmosis unit and figured I'd mix the R/O water with my tap water to soften it. I wasn't arriving at the KH and PH values I wanted without making the GH value too low (1.5) apparently in the tap water/R/O mix. This low GH value seemed to work out fine for my plants ranging from hair grass, banana plants, red amazon swords and a variety of others and for the Amazon river fish species I purchased on the net shipped from afar. But the fish I purchased locally showed signs of osmotic stress within a day or two and a few of them died despite my efforts to acclimate them properly to my much softer water parameters. I realized I needed to raise my GH value without affecting my KH and PH values if the fish purchased locally were to have a better chance of survival. Adding Equalibrium to my R/O water in combination with Acid and Alkaline buffers in the appropriate portions achieved the water parameters and stability I had been trying to achieve with the tap water mix alone prior. I settled upon using Equilibrium to raise my GH after a fair amount of research reviewing the various products available for accomplishing this. The label claims it doesn't use sodium chloride as one of the ingredients which is why I went with Equilibrium instead of others. I'll likely stick with it based upon how it's been working out for me thus far.

Does what it's supposed to do. I have pretty Soft water, and my shrimp and snails didn't appreciate that. This definitely helped with shrimp breeding and snail shell health. It's pricey, so if you use alot of this, definitely go for the bucket of it, it's alot cheaper.

As advertised