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Falsaf,

Are the plants growing better as well or is it just killing the algae.

My Scapes

I've made the same experiment in 2 4G tanks no Co2, they are heavily planted and still i got all kinds of algae known, in fact i could do a thesis on all the kinds]:| The problem with this tanks is that they have very high light and they are very small, so it's difficult as hell to keep them under control.

A week a go i decided to use Flourish excell just for the heck of it, i've tried everything, so one more attempt wouldn't hurt more. To my surprise both tanks are looking great, one specially had a really bad case of hair algae, today, all of it is dieing, turned redish and start faling apart. It's also getting rid of velvet green algae, which i didn't mind, but it's now gone.

So i guess it's a good option if you can't use Co2.



Falstaf attached this image:

I dose flourish excel by the instructions at first and then I tried changing the dose until I found what helped the plants the best. Now I add 1 capful a day, sometimes 2 capfuls, and 2 capfuls when I do my 10g water changes twice a week for a 55g tank. It became useless when I got my co2 working but since the co2 unit broke I've been using flourish excel again along with a quick 2 liter diy system until the new unit comes. It seems to be keeping the spot algae under control.

Hi,
Algae results from an imballance within the aquarium.

One way of controlling the balance is to add plants to the
aquarium. However, plants need a variety of minerals and
nutrients to thrive. Normally they get them from the water
and the results of decomposition of food, and fish waste.

However, an Amazon Sword plant does not take up the same
amount of nutrients and minerals as does, say, a crypt,
or floating plants. The result is that there can be an
excess, or defficiency, of Fe, or Mg, or K, etc.
The various types of algae take advantage of the excess or
defficiency of these nutrients and quickly fill the niche
that exists.

Most of the liquid, or solid (tablets, balls, sticks)
fertilizers contain a whole spectrum of nutrients that
are necessary for plants to thrive. Some even come with
excess stuff such as Flourish with Iron. To properly use
one of these, you would have to know what you need to be
adding as far as defficency is concerned, and, you would
have to weigh the benefits (if any) or hazards (if any)
of the rest of the nutrients that come with say the extra
iron in that Flourish.
By that I mean that if you use an Iron supplement, along
with that you might also be increasing (over the amount
that plants will take up) the K, or P in the tank. If you
do that, then a type of algae will begin to grow to take
advantage of the excess.

In general, fighting algae, by adding across the board
supplements, is not (IMO) a good idea. It's better to
figure out what conditions are creating your problem, and
then tailoring your response to it.

You might check out this link:
http://www.freshwateraquariumplants.com/freshwateraquariumalgae.html

Frank



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