flourish excel dosing

[blue_martian]

Hey All,

Sorry if this has been covered (am I'm sure it has) but I couldn't find it on my search.

Unfortunately I just can't seem to get enough CO2 in the tank so I thought I may as well try using excel instead (and have the added bonus of removing the unsightly reactor and extra circulation pumps from my tank.)

I have a heavily planted 50 G tank with medium to medium low lighting (depending on the thinkness of my duckweed )
I use EI and typically do my 50% water changes weekly.

I read here somewhere that the dosing levels that are recommended on the bottle of flourish excel are not really enough for a heavily planted tank. But then you also read that if you use too much you will kill everything..

So I thought I'd seek out some advice about it, the bottle says to use 5 mls for every 10 gallons after a water change and thereafter use 5mls per day for every 50 G.

Is that enough? or should I double/triple that? At what levels should I start to be concerned about killing fish and plants?

Thanks for your tips

 

[argnom]

Hey blue_martian,

In my opinion, if you are having a hard time getting enough CO2 (I presume you are using "tanked" gas and not DIY), using Excel alone will not do the job on a 50gal tank imo. If you are using DIY sugary water+yeast, I would, if possible, invest in a pressurized CO2 system. Trust me, it's really worth it. I simply never had good results before getting one myself.

As for the dosing of Excel, I put 5ml of Excel everyday in my 28gal on top of using pressurized CO2 and never had any problems.

Hope this helps

 

[Oreo]

Well, first you should know that some plants really just don't tolerate excel well. Vals for instance will melt away, although I have heard that they can be slowly conditioned to grow with excel in the water.

As far as the fish are concerned, I have been able to add fully twice the recommended daily dose without problem. I haven't had the nerve to risk going higher. However, if you're tempted to push the limit I can suggest dosing twice a day or more. The active ingredient in Excel is a reducing agent (like ozone or bleach) and will react fairly quickly once in the water column. I suspect dosing multiple times through out the day would allow enough time for the excel in the water column to become less toxic to fish between doses allowing for a much higher total daily dosage.

Also, give Florin Axis a try. It's completely different then Excel and far as I can tell, non-toxic to fish. I think the active ingredient is a vitamin C variant or something IIRC. I actually had pearling in my tank at one point using only Axis and no Excel but in your case I would recommend using both Axis and Excel at the same time for maximum effect.

 

[Tug]

Hi all,
Oreo, is Florin Axis easier on plants like Vals?

 

[herns]

Im a big user of Excel but they are expensive. I resorted to Metricide 14 recently and it does the same great job. I bought 2- 2Gal for about the price of a 2Liters Excel.

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/f...104038-metricide-14-replace-excel-dosing.html

 

[Oreo]

Florin axis didn't seem to have any negative affects regardless of how much I dosed.

On the flip side, when I bought Axis in bulk (2x 1L bottles) I couldn't get the plants to pearl like before. Not sure if it was a bad batch or just what.

 

[argnom]

I really would like to get my hands on the MSDS sheet or list of active ingredients for FlorinAxis. I've heard some speculate a whole lot on the contents. It's some kind of sugar (probably not sucrose or glucose), some kind of alcohol (probably not ethanol, maybe methanol), even citric acid is in the list.

I'm certain though that if someone, somewhere ever finds out, it will be posted here.

Cheers!

 

[csmith]

FlorinAxis Ingredients:
Purified Water, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Magnesium Sulfate, Humic Acid, Fulvic Acid, Protein Hydrolysate, Kelp Extract.

Nope, I don't know what it all means.

Statment: A short chat with my botany professor tells me that this would be a form of carbon aquatic plants could use. He also said wood alcohol could be used much in the same way. Whether this would harm fish or not, I do not know.

Response: Way too far out of Organic Chemistry to be able to visualize the equations, but I guess this makes sense. Seems to me that it's more likely that some microorganisms would eat the actual sugar, releasing CO2 in the process (similar to a home-brew CO2 reactor). Might also produce ethanol, but not sure if it would be an amount harmful to fish or other life. No idea if dissolved sugar itself in the water would be a problem for fish or not. Maybe wind up creating diabetic fish?

None of the typical MSDS sites recognize the stuff, and Brightwell's MSDS is curiously down for this product on their website.

 

[Oreo]

Citric acid... yea that's what I meant- not Vit. C. SOrry, my bad.

You can break it down to see at least what's there without going into extreme chemistry:

Citric Acid = C6H8O7, (Krebs cycle, Citric acid is one of a series of compounds involved in the physiological oxidation of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates to carbon dioxide and water.)
Sodium Citrate = Na3C6H5O7 (Sodium citrate can refer to any of the three sodium salts of citric acid. As a conjugate base of a weak acid, [trisodium] citrate can perform as a buffering agent, resisting changes in pH.)
Magnesium Sulfate = MgSO4 (Epsom salt. We know what this does.)
Humic Acid = Lots going on here. Read the wiki. Maybe this is the source of carbon?
Fulvic Acid = wiki redirects to Humic Acid. Same thing?
Protein Hydrolysate = protein that has been hydrolyzed or broken down into its component amino acids.
Kelp Extract = Perhaps a thickening or emulsification agent?

 

[argnom]

Thanks for the info!

It seems that there are not many questions without answers over here.

The only thing I could find about Fulvic acid to add is the following:

Fluvic acid: A straw-coloured extract of humus that remains after humic acid has been precipitated with acid.

I think I have some reading to do... Seems interesting.

Cheers!