I have acquired some Flourish Excel, and I want to use it in my 5.5 gallon Betta tank. How much should I dose in regards to the tank size and the fact that I have Contortion Vals and Anacharis. I heard Flourish Excel can harm those plants in excess.

I know the first dose is supposed to be rather large compared to the doses after it. I hope someone can help me calculate this.

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you should start with about 1/4 of a cap full and depending on the amount of plants that are in your tank, work your way up to 1/2 a cap full. i.e. 1 month 1/4 full then 1/2 the rest of the time. i have used flourish excel and it doesnt really do much for my plants. but it does over a long period of time, and make sure youre consistant on the dosage.

Well I did some calculations, just to be sure.

Initial dose:

5ml per 10g

I can safely say my tank isn't exactly 5.5g so I made it 4.5g in the calculations.

that's 2.25ml per 4.5g

Now, because I have Anacharis & Vals , should I halve that?

As for the every other day doses:

5ml per 50g

which is

.45ml per 4.5g

Should I also halve that dose because of Anacharis & Vals?

I can measure all of this to a pretty accurate amount, I'm a person of science and happen to have these tools. ;D

I just don't want to kill my favorite and best growing plants. :3

Edit: I also see people dosing depending on how many water changes they do. The tank just finished cycling and I don't plan on doing as many water changes as before, so I'm probably gonna do 10% per week.

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For excel to be beneficial you need to dose everyday. It gets expensive if dosed the way it should be, I would just do diy instead.

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SUCCESS IS MEASURED BY YEARS, NOT MONTHS!!!
220 Tank build
http://www.aquariumforum.com/f15/sta...late-3253.html

Can you link me some sites?

I was also thinking about dosing excel anyways since I have a little bit a hair algae growing on my vals, I don't really want to uproot them to clean them. Any suggestions on how to clean it up without it getting algae on other leaves/all over the tank?

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You can actually do both, and running co2 will help put the algae at bay. There is all kinds of recipes for diy, I even think there is one on here.

__________________
SUCCESS IS MEASURED BY YEARS, NOT MONTHS!!!
220 Tank build
http://www.aquariumforum.com/f15/sta...late-3253.html