Can I remineralize water for Neocaradina in my community tanks with Equilibrium and Fritz Cichlid Buffer or Baking Soda

[anodyne99]

I hope someone with more shrimp experience than I can help! 

I understand that Salty Shrimp Gh/Kh remineralizes water at a ratio of 1d GH to .5d KH. Compared to Equilibrium and Fritz Cichlid buffer (or baking soda), Salty Shrimp is crazy expensive. 

If I maintain the same 1/.5 ratio and go to the same GH and KH levels  (I do GH 6 and KH 3), is there any reason not to switch from Salty Shrimp GH KH to Equilibrium and Fritz Cichlid Buffer (or baking soda)? 

Thank you so much for any advice you can offer! 

[Lennie]

I havent used salty shrimp but I use shrimp gh+ product and mont clay powder of another local brand and used to use equilibrium in the past.

usually these sort of gh+ and gh-kh+ shrimp products come with extra minerals and different ratios from what I understand.

Im not exactly sure if the following info is true,  I saw this chart on reddit;

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
 

and this is the equilibrium chart on Seachem’s official site ;

Guaranteed Analysis  Amounts per 1 g
Soluble Potash (K2O)	23.0%
Calcium (Ca)	8.06%
Magnesium (Mg)	2.41%
Iron (Fe)	0.11%
Manganese (Mn)	0.06%

Equilibrium has way more K. And different ingredients. The main thing that increases gh reading is calcium and magnesium from what I know. So it is also a question of what else the products you use have while you are reaching those wanted numbers. I personally didnt want to increase gh but also dose so much K at the same time, it felt harder to balance a tank in terms of nutrition for me. 
 

Someone also shared their experience like this: “I did a crude experiment on a gallon of RO, targeting 10gH on each gallon using saltyshrimp, GLA GH booster, and seachem equilibirum. The saltyshrimp ended up being 244ppm TDS and 11GH. The GH booster was 386ppm/12GH. The equilibirum was 426ppm/12GH.”

Another point is gh is usually affected heavily by calcium and magnesium but TDS is affected by many things added. 

Neocaridinas are hardy. They are tolerant to many tank conditions. If you can support trace minerals in the water I think you can use equilibrium. If you are keeping sensitive shrimp species, or already struggling with controlling nutrition in the water column,  using a shrimp specific product might be a better idea if you ask me. Overall, using a well known shrimp product for a shrimp tank makes more sense for sure. Maybe equilibrium+ Montmorillonite clay for trace elements and molting? I use it and very happy about it, solved my molting issues

I have a tap with 18 dkh so I have never used kh products, I cant comment on that one.
 

I used equilibrium with my orange neocaridinas in the past and I still had some molting issues going on now and then until I used mont. clay powder. (I have a wTer softener tho). Switching gh+ product was not all alone enough to stop molting issues totally but I didnt use salty shrimp and it probably have different ingredients than mine.

 

[ange]

I would personally opt for Equilibrium as the remineralizer of choice, however Neos are quite tolerant of a variety of ranges and your tap water may be fine for them unless your water is insanely soft.