Gumby

I've got a secret for you guys. Seachem sells several products with the same main ingredient that Excel has. It has been speculated that Excel is a very dilute concentration of glutaraldehyde... a common hospital disinfectant.

Check this out: http://www.seachem.com/support/forum...hread.php?t=80

I know a guy (friend/customer) who ordered some glutaraldehyde(ebay) for his fish tank to try it out. He somehow managed to figure out dosage and gave it a try. His plants went crazy, and his algae died. Unfortunately, so did his shrimp... perhaps Seachem's isomer is less toxic.

Like that link said, several of Seachem's products contain glutaraldehyde or something similar. If you're looking just to kill algae, check out another Seachem product: Pond Health Guard. PHG contains glutaraldehyde, it says it on the bottle and on that information sheet.

I worked at a store for 6 years that had horrible BBA problems. Our old manager some how figured out that he could safely dose PHG to kill both BBA and GSA. Keep in mind, this was a petstore... Tanks were full of fish and had little or no live plants. It wasn't a case of plants being able to absorb nutrients better to starve the algae. It straight up killed the algae, but not the fish. Algae would typically bleach out and die.

Just some food for thought.

plantbrain

The store would had been better off simply using copper.
We can get 24% PGA, same active ingredinet and concentration as Excel.

Unlike snake oils, adding Excel will help plants(up to a point) and many plants are non responsive. I already knew HC is.

I really do not even care about BBA, or even GSA, those are easy to deal with without Excel.

Cladphora and Spirogyra are the main two pest species left and Excel at insane dosing did nothing to them.

So.......it's just a carbon additive alternative for me other than CO2, not an effective algicide.

If you have issues with GSA(also CO2 related) and BBA(CO2 related) then you need to use the gas properly to begin with.

Proper usage of CO2 is 95% of folk's problems, not the other nutrients.
Excel is not going to solve those issues.

Basically what I am saying, it's not god's gift to cure alls, it's still a Carbon additive and it can kill off some species of algae, but unless you plan on using lots of it for a long time, it's still only a band Aid for the real issue.

Anyway, if someone bought a CO2 gas tank, are they going to sell it because they cannot figure out how to use it? And use Excel instead?

Try this on larger tanks and see how much you will be spending.
It behoves folks to work on the CO2 and learn how to use it properly, not go for Excel as an easy out.

Then they will know what they did wrong and learn from that rather than avoid learning by buying a cure all.

Excel will not hurt the tank, but it still has limitations.

Copper is also a plant nutrients that can kill BBA and other species of algae, Cladophora included and is toxic at higher levels to inverts, Crypts can handle very high amounts.

I'm not sure why folks do not use some of the things that have been around for 50 years and that are used in pest control in the environment by State, Local and Federal agencies to target algae and not hurt the aquatic plants.

Greg Watson has been seeing how his batch of PGA works and we will know a fair amount shortly.

Regards,
Tom Barr

www.BarrReport.com

duckdog

Is it just me or when the plants get what they need eg... excel more carbon, they are healthy there for no algae? Carbon not the only thing they need but to me if your tank has algae and its gone when you add cabon they must be not getting enough carbon?

Nelson

Gumby

I tried this out because I don't have time to make a cover for my sump so that I can up my CO2... I dosed 3x reccomended dose every day for a week and all my BBA and Staghorn is gone. I think I can attribute some fishloss to it though... I has two cardinal tetras die for no apparent reason. Shrimp all survived. Weird.

Zapins

"Cladphora and Spirogyra are the main two pest species left and Excel at insane dosing did nothing to them."

Tom: while i agree with the rest of your last post about fixing the root cause/excel being a Band-Aid/ and higher co2 levels what i dont understand is how you can say excel does not have any effect on Cladphora and Spirogyra even though several people in this thread have clearly and uniformly observed that these algae species are affected as well.

have you tested excel on these 2 species of algae in ALL water conditions? perhaps if x3 dosing does not work on your Cladphora it is due specifically to your water conditions and is not the normal reaction that these algae species exhibit when dosed with excel.

robitreef

What about us out there that have low-light tanks? I have 110W over a 75 and have crypts, Java fern, etc. Can Flourish excel supply enough Carbon while eliminating BBA?

trckrunrmike

How much so I dose my 20 gallon? 1 capful?

How do you guys know how much you put it? I use the cap thread method described on Seachem's bottles but I'm not sure how accurate that is.

KeIgO86

I strongly advise against using copper treatment for any forms of algae if you have invertibrates in your tank.

Copper at amounts that are harmless to cladophora (or any other form of algae for that matter) is already devastating to inverts. I once used a brand of liquid fert which has an exceptionally high concentration of copper (25x that of seachem flourish for the same volume) which I have not realised until I checked up its content concentrations on the internet. It devastated every single invertibrate in my tank, from cherrys to yamatoes to even pest snails. Not a single shrimp survived. Only a few strong pest snails survived the onslaught. My tank used to be crawling with pest snails. The algae was never affected in anyway though.

houseofcards

Has anyone had any problems with Didiplis diandre during the excel overdose treatment. I noticed mine is having a tough time and I don't know if it's just a coincedence.

Scrimp

Ive been researching this...Does this mean that the carbon in my water already is easily depleted and gone<minus the min amount the fish put out> Ive been using excel though Im thinking the fish cant put out enough of this to help keep this process up. Is this why most people use the o2 yeast tanks or the o2 filled tanks?

If Excell makes it more readily available this means there already has to be a sufficiant amount in the tank, right?