I used flourish excel for a while. But stopped after the bottle ran out.Excel can melt several species of plants.
Fluval stratum I believe is an inert lava rock type product with a minimal CEC rating.
Root tabs dissolve @ different rates.
Have you thought about dosing the water column?
With that high of excel dose, will I melt my plants?I don't think WC caused your algae. I think low CO2 and certain nutrients make your plants unhappy and algae happy. Fluval stratum sand has no carbon source, and your weekly dosing of Excel is not frequent enough to provide adequate liquid carbon. Excel Glutaldehyde degrades in 24 hours and you need to dose daily. To control algae, I would dose 2x excel daily, and 5x after each WC as instructed. You may also need to dose macro and micro nutrients in the water column depending on what's in the root tabs. Fish poop and left over fish food do not provide balanced nutrients, typically deficient in potassium, iron and certain micro nutrients.
Depending on the plants, vals and mosses are sensitive to Excel, yet I tried to kill my volunteered mosses with 2x Excel daily and 6X Excel after WC with no luckWith that high of excel dose, will I melt my plants?
What do you recommend for dosing ferts?
A lack of nutrients is suspect indeed. How often do you dose? I am on week two of doing bi weekly water changes, so no great difference yet.I'm thinking that your plants might not be getting enough nutrients to beat back the algae. I had a similar problem in my tank recently, but after changing up my ferts it all cleared up in a very short time. Root tabs are great for root feeding plants, but they don't do much for plants that feed mainly from the water column. As for water changes, I'll do a small one if I see a bunch of matter lying around, but otherwise it's usually once/month or so. I've been using easy green and easy carbon, and flourish root tabs near some of my root-feeders, and they're working well for me. Do you have anything in the way of a cleanup crew? Snails, shrimps, algae eaters?
Great advice. Thank you!I dose once/week with the fert, and every other day with the carbon, because that's what the directions said for mine. They're working out well for me so far. Whatever fert you buy, just start with what the manufacturer recommends for dosing, as different ferts might have different directions. If they have multiple directions, start with their lowest recommended dose for your tank size and try that for a few weeks before moving up. It took somewhere between a few days and a week for me to really see a difference, but once I saw it, it cleared out pretty fast.