# Do you fertilize while trying to kill Staghorn algae?



## [email protected] (Dec 2, 2015)

Hi I’m cycling my planted tank 17 gallon cube high tech , I got staghorn algae all over trying excel 4x dosage , 

It’s 3 weeks now I’m using Tropica powder soil releasing ammonia,

Do I fertilize? I have Tropica premium Fertilizer, could it be low co2 and not enough fertilizer algae is growing?


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## houseofcards (Mar 21, 2009)

You give the plants everything they need from the getgo. Good plant growth makes it harder for algae to multiple. If you have algae this early on it's all based on what you did from the start. Most likely too much light with too much ammonia and not enough water changes will allow algae to grow especially with limited plant mass.


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## [email protected] (Dec 2, 2015)

I believe too much light and ammonia caused it well I reduced the light increased co2 now, will the fertilizer feed algae to grow also?? 

What should I do now? Should I add easy plants as well?


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## houseofcards (Mar 21, 2009)

[email protected] said:


> I believe too much light and ammonia caused it well I reduced the light increased co2 now, will the fertilizer feed algae to grow also??
> 
> What should I do now? Should I add easy plants as well?


Adding additional fast growers will definitely help. Then you could gradually remove them if you wanted an iwagumi-type look. Yes, technically the fertilizer will feed the algae but the only way to get rid of it is to have healthy plants. The best example I could give which I've used before is a grass lawn. When the lawn is nice and thick the weeds don't grow, but when the lawn is stressed and bare patches develop weeds grow. So in this case the algae is the weed and the plants are the lawn. 

It doesn't take alot to feed algae anyway, so if you stop feeding the plants the plants will have deficiencies like a weak lawn and algae will continue to grow. Shorting the light cycle, do regular water changes. I would even add carbon to the filter to absorb organics before they decay. It's effect on fertilizer is extremely minimal.


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## [email protected] (Dec 2, 2015)

Damn this is so tricky , how do you know then if I should fertilize or no lol, right now I’m adding 50% of the dosage of fertilizing to not feed the algae but I read somewhere that algae feeds off phosphates and nitrates but Tropica fertilizer says it has nitrogen phosphorus iron etc


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## natemcnutty (May 26, 2016)

[email protected] said:


> Damn this is so tricky , how do you know then if I should fertilize or no lol, right now I’m adding 50% of the dosage of fertilizing to not feed the algae but I read somewhere that algae feeds off phosphates and nitrates but Tropica fertilizer says it has nitrogen phosphorus iron etc


 @houseofcards already told you 

Dosing at half of what your plants need will only make things worse. The plants need to get healthy, and as they do, the algae will start to go away. Just keep manually cleaning things up and add more healthy fast growers if you can.


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## Jeff5614 (Dec 29, 2005)

Adding ferts while trying to clean up algae does sound counter-intuitive, but the times I've had algae problems were times that I decided to give no ferts a try. Everything was good for a while until what the plants had stored up began to run out. Unhealthy plants attract algae. Healthy plants don't. Give the plants what they need to become healthy while removing all of the algae that you can, do frequent as in twice weekly large water changes and cut down on light.

Here's an "inspirational" video.


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## Letsfish (Jul 11, 2017)

I don`t have a high tech set up but I do dose a combination fertilizer 2 times a week along with Excell at the recommended dose 2 days also.As of right now I am battling Staghorn and winning.What I am doing is reducing my light schedule from 8 hours a day to 6 and doubling the recommended dose of Excell every day.I`m pretty sure in a couple of days the algae will be gone.
I am not sure of what is in Excell but it is having a remarkable effect on algae.


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