Excel Initial Dose

The 5 ml/10 gallons dosage is very hard on certain plants, setting them back considerably (vals, for example). I stopped doing that dosage a few years ago, and have never regretted it.

 

Hi Frank158,

I asked Seachem the exact same question, the answer was appropriate. If we are trying to attain a certain ppm of available carbon molecules then when we do a significant water change we have reduced the available carbon molecules in the tank. The higher 'Initial Dose' amount is how the carbon molecule ppm is brought back to the ppm level before the water change.

 

Search their forums and some of their people will give slightly different answers about the life of Excel in the water column. Definitely dose before lights come on.
Some posts by seachem state Excel will only last 11-12 hours, some say 24 hours.

I wouldn't bother with the post W/C dose.
Tom has suggested dosing 1.5-2x the daily dose in the no CO2 article. I did that for a long time and it worked very well.

 

This is why I changed to a 2X Excel dosage, daily, with no water change "super dose". When I read the test report of API's version of Excel, where they don't do the "super dose", I realized that what that report really showed was the advantage of not doing that "super dose". All it did, that was measurable was slow the initial growth of plants. (Not all plants, but some of them.)