# excel, corkscrew vals, hair algae.



## armagedon48 (Jun 13, 2007)

for months i have been able to skip all fertilizer or any other additives. everything has done great. 

then i acquired some java moss from someone who has hair algae in their tanks. i put the moss in a separate tank and i breed my glowlight tetras in this tank. well i made the mistake of adding the tetras back into the display tank and now i have hair algae taking hold. 

my tank is dominated by corkscrew vals. they form the background and sides of the tank. its a 10 gal tank with 45W light 6500k. i have read somewhere that excel is bad for most vals. i don't want to start dosing excel and end up killing 60% of my plant load. 

does anyone have any advise or info that will help me? i will have photos up tomorrow. right now im doing my 1x per month HOT magnum cleaning.


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## jlroar (Aug 19, 2007)

I have had vails for almost a year and had to remove them a few weeks ago due to my Goldfish getting ahold of their roots. But I found that if you remove the algae by hand and lower the amount of lights, and the duration of lights it makes a world of difference. In the photo below (if it shows up and I know it's hard to see the vails are on the right side of the tank).

This tank does not have co2 added and the lights are less than 2 wpg and left on for a total of 8 hours per day via a timmer.










James


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## bigtanklvr (Dec 24, 2007)

I recently had a very bad case of algae tried every thing nothing worked went to florida for 5 days before i went i did a 50% water change dosed with something called clear and left the lights off, came back algae was gone 100%. Plants and fish were fine after 5 days with no food or lights. DO NOT USE EXCEL WITH VALS. I tried it and it melts them. Good luck.


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## jlroar (Aug 19, 2007)

Thanks for the info.

James


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## BiscuitSlayer (Apr 1, 2005)

You probably will want to stay away from using excel because of your vals. There are multiple threads where people have tried to use Excel to fight algae and it killed/melted their vals.


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## armagedon48 (Jun 13, 2007)

i think im going to dose anyway. at first sign of melting, i will remove ALL my vals and trash them. they grow so stinking fast that i can easily grow them again when the algae is gone. 

im going to do a spot treatment on half my moss. this is where the algae is the worse.


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## Homer_Simpson (May 10, 2007)

armagedon48 said:


> i think im going to dose anyway. at first sign of melting, i will remove ALL my vals and trash them. they grow so stinking fast that i can easily grow them again when the algae is gone.
> 
> im going to do a spot treatment on half my moss. this is where the algae is the worse.



Lol, why not just try spot treating your Vals with H202(hydrogen peroxide 1ml/gallon using syringe to squirt the H202 directly on the areas containing algae) instead of Excel. Not only is the H202 cheaper but the vals will likely tolerate it better.


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## armagedon48 (Jun 13, 2007)

here is day two of spot treating my flame moss area. you can see the algae is dieing. 









unfortunately, the rest of the tank still has algae that is still growing rapidly... im almost ready to remove all my shrimp, and dose heavily on the excel. 

for CO2, i have a DIY 2 liter bottle doing the job, and the co2 is directed into a tiny pump in the tank. the bubbles get chopped up really well and the water circulation doesnt bother the surface much at all.


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## armagedon48 (Jun 13, 2007)

oh yea, last night i noticed some older leaves on my vals were rotting, so i trimmed them ALL down really short and removed several vals from the tank. i think this gives me a chance to play with stem plants a bit more.


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## cott (May 26, 2007)

I treated my vals with peroxide for the first time yesterday. I had a tank full of them and it melted everyone of them. Hygro is in sad shape as well. Both these plants have very fine leaves and neither did well with the peroxide treatment. I avoided using Excel for this reason. pewy!


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## monkeyruler90 (Apr 13, 2008)

the thing that sucks with vals is that if something happens anywhere in the leaf you have to cut the whole leaf off or else it'll rot. id say the best thing to do is to give them all a really short haircut, probably all the way to the crown, and then let them grow back, by the time they'll grow out they ought to be algae free.


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## Hilde (May 19, 2008)

I have 2 corkscrew vals in my 29 gallon tank. They are in the middle, thus get the most light. They had some hair algae on them and other plants had BBA. I dosed daily 4mm of peroxide and 2mm of excel for a week. Reduced the lights too, for the lights are the engine to everything. Now the algae is gone and the vals are fine.

I also started adding KNO3. I am a bit of an experimenter and am impulsive, thus dosed 1tsp of KNO3, which was diluted in 1/2 cup of tank water. I probably dosed to much for I lost a few fish. I love my plants more than my fish, though.

Algae is an imbalance of lights and nutrients. What worked for me might not work for you.


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## Homer_Simpson (May 10, 2007)

Hilde said:


> ...Algae is an imbalance of lights and nutrients. What worked for me might not work for you.


I am glad to see independent confirmation of this. I found out that there are many variables that you can mess with when your tank has algae or does not well, including c02 rates/diffusion, fertilization, and lighting. I realized the hard way that the easiest one to control to get rid of algae is lighting and fertilization. Control the lighting and c02 and fertilization does not become as critical, there is insufficient light to spark algae and it just becomes easier to maintain the balance.

Now related to the thread, I have actually read that some folks were able to use Excel with sensitive plants like vals, riccia and elodea by slowly working their dosing up from very little to more. I am not saying that anyone should try it or that it will work, it is what some allege.

For what it is worth, many folks experience riccia turning brown with excel dosing. I have 3 tanks with riccia. In two of the tanks I dose Excel daily at 2x dose. The riccia in both those tanks grows like a weed and I have to thin it out each week with every water change. I have yet to see the riccia turn brown.


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