Re: Flourish Excel and Onyx

["Katherine Yata" <k_yata at hotmail_com>]

I purchased a small bottle of Flourish Excel in December for my two gallon 
betta hex, lighted with 15 watt screw in compact fluorescent and planted 
with frogbit, java fern and Christmas moss. The tank had been infested with 
tangly green algae that wasn't bothering me, the fish or the plants. With 
one dose of Excel after my weekly tank rinse out/algae pruning the algae was 
gone. It supplied the carbon the plants needed to outcompete the algae I 
guess.

There was a thread on the boards at Age of Aquariums about Excel. Another 
poster had the opposite thing happen. A previously algae free tank got 
algae!

I am continuing to use the Excel now the betta has been moved to a five 
gallon tank and the tank has been problem free. I have had to scrape the 
front pane once and am going to have to do it again today but no other algae 
has appeared. The two gallon was getting no additives, now I am 
supplementing with Seachem Potassium and 1/2 test kit spoon of 
micronutrients as well as the Excel. Plants are growing quite slowly but 
look pretty good, 2 kinds of crypt, water wisteria, Marsilea, Myriophyllum 
heterophyllum, Ludwigia repens doing very well; Eleocharis vivipara and 
Echinodorus latifolia not happy.

Kathy

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Has anyone here had any experience with Seachem's product called
Flourish
Excel?  I was talking to an employee at a local fish store
today, and he was
telling me it could actually be used in place of a CO2 system.
I looked it
up on Seachem's website, and they say the same.  Looks like it
basically
just provides a source of carbon for the plants.  Apparently
they use it in
all their plant tanks at the shop instead of CO2 systems.

Also of interest is their substrate product called Onyx.  Anyone
have any
experience with it?  I seem to recall some posts going by a
while back
regarding that product, but I don't recall what was said.  The
local fish
store employee I talked to today loved the stuff, but said it
did have some
buffering to it, so it would drive the ph up to the low to mid
7's if you
didn't actively drop the ph in some way.

Anyway, I wanted to check in with you all on these products, as
I find that
this particular fish store employee sometimes gets a bit carried
away when
telling you how wonderful Seachem products are.  :)
- -joe





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