Is excel necessary?

[Parryaw]

I have a 3ft planted tank with CO2 and high light. The plants are growing well but there seems to be a fair bit of algae on some of the plants. My algae crew is 3 SAEs and 2 Borneo suckers. Would more algae eaters help or should I use excel?


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[hann]

Algae eaters help somehow but they do not eat all algae. Also, generally some find SAE a nuisance after some time because they do not eat algae but go after commercial fish food

[wongce]

Depend on what algae you have... not all algae eaters are suitable for all algaes...

Excel is useful too...

[thebaldingaquarist]

personally, i do not recommend to dose excel for treatment of algae.

For algae, i use excel only for
1. spot treatment where only one specific area or piece of hardscape needs to be treated.
2. quarantine of plants.. i get plants from external sources, i place them in a tank with excel dosed water as quarantine.

for algae, i would strongly urge you to see what is causing the algae to grow faster than the plants. then fix the problem at the source.
if after diagnosing, you realise that you cannot fix the source of the imbalance, thats when you introduce algae eaters.

algae eaters do not eat all algae forms. some specifics..

green spot algae - horned nerite snails
BBA - very young SAE
thread algae - Young malayan shrimp

[Parryaw]

The Algae is very prominent on my bucep. The other plants are fine or maybe I just cannot see it ImageUploadedByTapatalk1393603372.156316.jpg.


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[thebaldingaquarist]

You most likely have GSA. GSA happens when plants have a incomplete set and amount of nutrients but is given high intensity light.

You can either look into dosing more of the missing ferts. N p or k. Or decrease the intensity (not duration) of the light.