Excel Life and intiial dosage amount?

Crazymidwesterner

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Feb 3, 2007
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Dixon IL
I've read that Excel only has about a 12 hour life in water. If that's true why does the initial dose after a water change call for such a high amount? Isn't every day essentially a complete restart for excel if it's gone after 12 hours?

Any thoughts?
 

Philosophos

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Mar 12, 2009
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Personally, I try not to worry; good hobbyists have the method down. Those with experience, who aren't focused on selling you anything, will give you honest answers every time.

My experience with Seachem is that they'll list non-bioavailable nutrients on the analysis for their substrate. They'll also sell a fine dusting of chemicals in water, and call it trace elements, then charge you handsomely for it. By the time you turn to their dosing, you have instructions to under-dose your tank with dosage increases based on knee-jerks to deficiency. When turning to an old debate, you'll find snakeoil peddling tactics: http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Fertilizer/gluconate.html

In short, I don't like hunting down cases where, "Hey if they'll pay $6 for some fertilizer residue, and $25 for a small bag of crushed clay, why not give them what they want?" may be the actual, and unstated answer.

Now I'm not saying SeaChem products can't be useful under some circumstances where fertilizers are hard to get, or you have no desire to order 2L of glutaraldehyde as Cidex plus or similar. I've stopped wondering about their reasoning or instruction. Instead, I've started using their products (now rarely) on my own terms.
 

Philosophos

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You'll need to order more than 1 jug if you're getting it online, to get the discount. Shipping usually involves a $20 or so hazardous chemical fee. Alternatively those qualified to handle lung-eviscerating chemicals using a fume hood could order 50% pure, dilute it to a safer level, and make us all do the happy dance by selling it to us at a better price than cidex.
 

ShadowMac

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Mar 25, 2010
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so i need to make a friend in the local university's chem dept. Also, had I known while in college I could have been quite industrious. Impressed my professors by spending extra time in the lab.