glutaraldehyde instead of excel

156585 Views 258 Replies 78 Participants Last post by Aquaticz, Oct 17, 2013

allen

Discussion Starter · Sep 30, 2006

Hey guys

Last week I have been using glutaraldehde in place of excel.I'm using a 2.8% solution.It's suppose to be about the same as excel but alot cheaper.I paid $16.95 a gallon.

I tried it in two tanks,a 10 gal. planted and a 60gal. planted.
It had a different effect in each tank on some of the same plants.Below I'll list each tank with the dose and effect I noticed.

60gal.,192 watts,11hours lights on,co2 injected,ferts daily,plants are red tiger lotus,rotalia indica,sword,ludwigia,anubias,hair grass and crypts,34 fish.

I dosed 30ml 9/23/6 after a water change then 10ml daily.
On 9/25/6 the angelfish spawned so it seems to have no effect on the fish.
9/27/6 the sword plant started growing fast.3-4" growth of new leaves daily.this plant has not grown much in the last 3 weeks.

It's been a week so far,water is clear,plants are growing fast and the little bit of algae I had is gone.

riccia is ok.

Now for the 10gal.,30 watts 8-10 hours,no co2,ferts daily,plants are sword,red tiger lotus,ludwigia,and bolbitis,tiger barb fry,cherry shrimp and alot of hair algae.

I dosed this tank heavier to see what would happen.
5ml daily.
9/23/6 dosed at 10:00am and by 7:00pm algae shows signs of dying.fish and shrimp are fine.

9/24/6 riccia is dying off.All the algae dead.fish are fine.water is a little cloudy.

9/25/6 water is clear.I have a few strands of moss in this tank.I think it's java moss.It is growing very fast.

9/30/6 moss has grown around 10" this week.this moss has been in here for 8 months without much growth.The bolbitis is a little darker green and the leaves have widened.Looks healthier then it ever has.

Other than the riccia dying and the water turning cloudy one day it seems to work well.

If I notice anything else I'll add it to this post.

Allen

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epicfish

· #41 · Oct 8, 2006

Tony, I'd be interested in helping you figure out what's in it. I might grab a bottle sometime and run GC-FTIR-MS on it...unless you beat me to it. =P

dennis

· #42 · Oct 11, 2006

Show-offs

Well that online source really paid off, so to speak. I ordered the 450ml of 25% biological grade gluteraldehyde on Friday around 4:30. It cam today, Wednesday, before noon. The total with shipping was 21.95, so about $6 shipping. That will equal 4.5 liters of 2.5% solution, at $4.88 a liter. If I dose 7ml a day this will last me almost 2 years

Not bad.

Thanks for pointing out this source!!!!

Since I have riccia as a major part of my scape, I think I will start around .1mg/l and see what the results are like. For my application, my 29 gallon aquarium (actually 25 gallons) is equal to 94.5L. Making a 2.5% solution by adding 10ml 25% gluteraldehyde to 90ml H20 and dosing 5ml of that solution will give me .13mg/l in my tank. This is convenient since I have a used 100ml Flourish Excel bottle laying around. Also useful since I can do a half dose to my 15 gallon for the same concentration.

I'll post when I am able to see results, either good or bad.

Bert H

· #43 · Oct 11, 2006

Looking forward to your progress reports, Dennis. :thumbsup:

epicfish

· #44 · Oct 12, 2006

Awesome. Hope the riccia does well. =) I'll be checking this thread often!

Take before and after pictures, especially of the riccia. Then we can really judge the growth rate when using glutaraldehyde.

jrings

· #45 · Oct 19, 2006

any new results?

dennis

· #46 · Oct 23, 2006

epicfish said:
Assuming the 2% is weight-by-volume: 2% w/v = 2 grams / 100 mL

30 mL in 60 gallons:
(2 grams / 100 mL) * 30 mL = 0.6 grams in 30 mL of the 2% solution.
If you add it to 60 gallons of water, 60 gallons * 3.78 L / gallon = 226.8 L
0.6 grams / 226.8 = 0.26 mg/L

Ummm, why am I figuring this wrong?

(2g/100ml)*30ml = 0.6grams in 30 ml at 2%

0.6g/226.8L= 0.002646 g/L

multiply that by 1000mg/1 gram= 2.65mg/l

Why were you getting 0.26mg/l? Where am I doing that wrong?

Another example:
2.5% solution (what i have) is 2.5gram/100ml, or 25000mg/l.

1ml of that solution is 25mg/ml. Adding 25mg to my aquarium, ~100L, is .25mg/l for my aquarium? Is that math correct?

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epicfish

· #47 · Oct 27, 2006

2.6mg/L, I stand corrected. Thanks. =)

I multiplied by 100, not 1000.

dennis

· #48 · Oct 27, 2006

I did not mean to "correct" you but it was throwing me for a loop. Math and chemistry are not my best subjects so I did not realize how much a 15ml dose adds

My bad. Good news is that tetras, nerites and pygmy cories can take 3.75ppm gluteraldehyde. Riccia is not to happy and BBA may be a bit grumpy but the plants and fauna are fine.

MatPat

· #49 · Oct 27, 2006

dennis said:
Math and chemistry are not my best subjects so I did not realize how much a 15ml dose adds

You seem to be doing fine with the math Dennis

Grumpy BBA is good and I am curious as to how your Riccia does. Allen said his was starting to come back but he hasn't posted in a while to give us an update

epicfish

· #50 · Oct 27, 2006

dennis said:
I did not mean to "correct" you but it was throwing me for a loop. Math and chemistry are not my best subjects so I did not realize how much a 15ml dose adds My bad. Good news is that tetras, nerites and pygmy cories can take 3.75ppm gluteraldehyde. Riccia is not to happy and BBA may be a bit grumpy but the plants and fauna are fine.

How are you adding the glutaraldehyde to the tank? Maybe if you had enough riccia, you could do a few experiments.

Have thse following groups of riccia:
1) Free-floating
2) Tied to a rock closest to the area where you dose your glutaraldehyde
3) 6 inches away from rock #2
4) 6 inches away from rock #3...and so on so forth.

This way, we can see if the initial "shocking" concentration of glutaraldehyde has anything to do with its death, or if the overall concentration of ~3.75ppm is enough to do it in. If we can figure out what's actually killing it, we might be able to find a good way to dose the glutaraldehyde. ie: Maybe mixing it with new water during a WC and adding it that way, or adding it as the water flows in from a python or something similar.

allen

Discussion Starter · #51 · Oct 27, 2006

Hey guys,

Sorry for not posting sooner.
My riccia has come back and is doing fine.After that first dose i thought it was dead.The red tiger lotus,ludwigia,bolbitis and sword are all growing with the best growth in the lotus and bolbitus.

The tiger barbs have been moved and now there are around 75 swordtail fry in the 10g.The fry are fine but the last of the shrimp has died.

There has not been any sign of algae in this tank since I started using glutaraldehyde.

I stopped using it in the 60g.It is co2 injected and I wanted to see if there was any ill effects using the glutaraldehyde with co2.Everything was fine except for the riccia to start with but it came back also.

I'm happy with the results.plants respond well and I save a few bucks over excel.Good luck to all that try this and please post any problems you might have.

Allen

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dennis

· #52 · Oct 27, 2006

epicfish said:
How are you adding the glutaraldehyde to the tank? Maybe if you had enough riccia, you could do a few experiments.

Have thse following groups of riccia:
1) Free-floating
2) Tied to a rock closest to the area where you dose your glutaraldehyde
3) 6 inches away from rock #2
4) 6 inches away from rock #3...and so on so forth.

This way, we can see if the initial "shocking" concentration of glutaraldehyde has anything to do with its death, or if the overall concentration of ~3.75ppm is enough to do it in. If we can figure out what's actually killing it, we might be able to find a good way to dose the glutaraldehyde. ie: Maybe mixing it with new water during a WC and adding it that way, or adding it as the water flows in from a python or something similar.

That could be a bit hard to control in a normal tank, but in my case I have 3 groups of riccia rocks. Group front left, group front right, group in the middle. Only the middle grouping was effected by the glut application and I assume this is due to eigher the highe rlight this group gets, or the fact that I apply the glut in the front right corner, so maybe that is where it settles first.

What is interesting is that a 15ml dose (3.75mg/l) did not really knock out the BBA or all the riccia. Only some riccia was affected and the only BBA hurt seems to be what I directly applied the D'cel to with a syringe at the last WC. I have not changed the CO2 levels though 2 weeks ago I increased the dosing of all my other nutrients. In the past larger doses of Excel would make the BBA turn pink, in this case, only direct application seems to do that. It does seem though that there is no new algae forming, which seems like a promising sign since I did not change the CO2 levels. I added a few Amano's a couple days ago, so we'll see if they pick at any possibly unknown weakened algae.

Is my math right now-> 15ml of a 2.5% solution in 95L=3.75ppm?

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epicfish

· #53 · Oct 28, 2006

Dennis,

That's what I was thinking. Maybe if the glutaraldehyde gets mixed up a little more before it's added to the tank, it wouldn't kill off the riccia. What if you added it close to the outflow of your filter, or close to any powerheads you might have?

ppm = mg/litres of water.
15 mL * 2.5 grams / 100mL = 0.375 grams = 375 miligrams.
ppm = 375 miligrams/97 liters = 3.87ppm.

I wonder how many ppm of glutaraldehyde-equivalent is in Excel.

dennis

· #54 · Oct 28, 2006

I do add it basically into the flow from the filter. What is interesting is that the riccia at the far end should get the most concentrated amount of glut but is the stuff in the midle that is affected. So, either its a result of the higher light in the middle or the gluteraldehyde settles faster through the water than it mixes initially.

I don't think we'll ever find out how much is in excel, and understandably so.

epicfish

· #55 · Oct 29, 2006

dennis said:
I do add it basically into the flow from the filter. What is interesting is that the riccia at the far end should get the most concentrated amount of glut but is the stuff in the midle that is affected. So, either its a result of the higher light in the middle or the gluteraldehyde settles faster through the water than it mixes initially.

I don't think we'll ever find out how much is in excel, and understandably so.

If we can atomic spectra on Excel, we might be able to figure out what it is....after that, I'm sure we'll be able to do something.

I wonder if this counts as violation of any intellectual property laws. Hm.

Raul-7

· #56 · Oct 31, 2006

According to Seachem they use a different isomer of glutaraldehyde than the common form used in hospitals.

epicfish

· #57 · Nov 1, 2006

Raul-7 said:
According to Seachem they use a different isomer of glutaraldehyde than the common form used in hospitals.

Yep. I think it was mentioned somehwere in this thread already. It's a polycycloglutaracetal. Nothing more than a few cyclic rings added on to your conventional glutaraldehyde. I was just wondering if "reverse engineering" this structure would be in the legal realm.

jude_uc

· #58 · Nov 9, 2006

After ordering the 50% biological grade stuff from the website epicfish and dennis mentioned, I saw that one of the components from the MSDS is 0.5% methanol. This is too small an amount to cause a problem, right? Also, did anyone have a problem in diluting it? Is it noxious at all?

-Adam

dennis

· #59 · Nov 9, 2006

Should not pose any issues.

jude_uc

· #60 · Nov 9, 2006

Thanks, good to know. Reading an MSDS always gives me the willies. I almost started to regret the decision of buying some..

-Adam

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