Easy Carbon and Val.

[Zac]

Hey all,

For those with Val that dose easy carbon or excel, what dosage do you use? I dose 2ml of easy carbon every other day for a medium-high light aquarium (30 gal).

I’ve recently been having a lot of Val melt and I’m trying to determine if it’s lack of nutrients or too much easy carbon. Some of my Val is doing great and some is melting a lot. I’m thinking about dosing 1ml every other day instead of 2ml

Thoughts?

[Mmiller2001]

There’s no safe amount of Glut. when it comes to Vals. It stunts them and if continuously used, will kill them eventually.

[Pepere]

Personally I never perceived much benefit from Easy carbon.  It just never seemed to do much..

 

Other measures I have taken have had much more benefit without the downsides of liquid carbons…..

 

my guess is the appeal of the liquid carbons is the idea of a few simple pumps every day to keep algae at bay…. It never worked out for me…. Neither did buying American flag fish to eat the algae….

[Zac]

On 7/10/2023 at 2:36 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

There’s no safe amount of Glut. when it comes to Vals. It stunts them and if continuously used, will kill them eventually.

I’ll have to discontinue use and keep the healthy ones and they should hopefully do fine. Would they return to normal over time? Aka non stunted growth

[Pepere]

This tank had daily dosing of Easy Carbon for months… before I gave up on it.   

[Zac]

On 7/10/2023 at 3:08 PM, Pepere said:

This tank had daily dosing of Easy Carbon for months… before I gave up on it.   

What went wrong with it? Did you give up on the tank or the carbon?

[Pepere]

The Easy Carbon was not having any effect I could discern.  I gave up on using it and started learning and investing in more effective means of Algae control.

 

This photo was over the weekend showing val that went through months of daily Easy Carbon.   No new val was purchased…

The Stunting resolved…. I now need to weed val baby plants weekly to keep it to the back of the tank and trim and thin it down so it doesnt overshadow everything else.

Edited July 10 by Pepere

[Zac]

On 7/10/2023 at 4:22 PM, Pepere said:

The Easy Carbon was not having any effect I could discern.  I gave up on using it and started learning and investing in more effective means of Algae control.

 

This photo was over the weekend showing val that went through months of daily Easy Carbon.   No new val was purchased…

The Stunting resolved…. I now need to weed val baby plants weekly to keep it to the back of the tank and trim and thin it down so it doesnt overshadow everything else.

What do you use now for algae control? I don’t have the money for a standard CO2 setup at the moment. My worry is that my tank isn’t “balanced” and that algae will grow when I stop using it

[Pepere]

Injected CO2 was the first major improvement I saw.  And increasing it to a ph drop of 1 was another improvement…. 
 

However I think there are a number of steps you can take short of co2 that helps more than liquid carbons.

1.) I only feed lightly once a day now.  This reduces food laying on plants for extended time. The fish eat more energetically now so less is left behind and the look none the worse for it.

2.) increasing flow amounts and flow distribution helps significantly.  It ensures the plants get nutrients, co2 and 02 distributed well.  And yes, co2 even if you dont inject it….It also ensures waste organics leaching from leaves are swept away to not grow algae on leaves.

you might have noticed algae tends to start on the leaf margins and predominantly on older leaves while new growth can be algae free.  The plant defends new growth at the expense of old. New growth gets the algae fighting chemicals.  Old growth leaves may be abandoned and can get growth before it detaches.

increasing flow can be done by increasing or updating filters.  I went with canister filters and spray bars reducing my total energy consumption and filter media and dramatically improving flow anount and characteristics…

alternatively a powerhead with a sponge filter for the intake and a spray bar across the back of the tank to diffuse the flow to the front coming down through the plants and back up the back…

or a wavemaker…

3.) manual removal. The less in the tank, the less opportunity for spread.  I take 15 minutes every morning to look closely and trim.  Older dying leaves are algae magnets and shade, take up space, diminish flow.  I would rather clip and allow space nutrients and light be attractive  for new growth… early on you can try spot treating with peroxide to old growth to try to restore if you have a lot, but now, I am pretty ruthless at just trimming it away as there is so little.   Sometimes cutting off the fresh new growth and uprooting the old to discard and then replant the new with stem’s is the best action…  sometimes pulling plants, soaking them i  seltzer overnight and replanting is the best…

4.) 50% water change weekly. It is not just for nitrate reduction.  I usually siphon of a couple of gallons to make working in the tank easier. I then trim and replant as needed for the week. Thin out plants as needed. To dense and flow through gets diminished leading to poor nutrition and lighting etc…. Wipe my front and side glass with algae scrubber. I then rub through all the plants in the tank dislodging waste organics, rubbing some leaves to remove algae etc… Then I siphon to at least the 50% level.  After doing all that work, you dislodged some algae that will be looking for a home base. It is currently suspended in the water column and this is the best time to suck water out.  You in essence dilute the free floating fragments…  if you have t been doing water changes you might want to start with smaller ones as your hardness may have crept up a fair amount from evaporation and top offs…  once you can safely do 50%, you might even want to do deeper water changes earlier while you have more algae.  I was doing 75% weekly for a bit..

5.) work to maintain stable water conditions.  I have soft water so I dose my water change every week to keep my KH and Gh the same after a water change as before.  Test kits for gh kh are cheap and are necessary to maintain the same level.  I also test my water for nitrates and dose easy green accordingly to keep nitrate at the 10-20 ppm mark consistently.  Plants expend a fair amount of energy optimizing their leaves for the conditions you give them.  If you keep the conditions stable it frees that plant from that work.  They can concentrate on growth, outcompeting algae, making algae fighting compounds etc..  rather than dose my 29 gallon tank 3 pumps twice a week, I do 6 pumps after water change to bring nitrate level back up after the water change. I then dose 1 pump a day most days of the week to replace what was consumed the day before. 1 pump adds 1 ppm Nitrate to 30 gallons of water.  That is what works for my tank with dense plants, high intense light and CO2.  Your tank may need less.  Test for nitrates often for a few weeks to see how it is being taken up.  
 

It can be hard to discriminate between 10 ppm and 20 ppm with the api master test kit.  Doing a 50% dilution of tank water with nitrate free water makes it clear if the tank was at 20 ppm or 10.  As plants grow and increase density test again a few times a week to see if they need more ferts dosing to keep at the 10-20 range.  After a big trimming reducing density and plant mass, test a few times to get a handle on how much the plants are consuming.p

Also early on, I would dose easy carbon right after completing a water change under the idea it might kill off suspended algae fragments.  

6.) light balance,  lighting is generally the first lever people reach for turning down intensity and photo period.  I tried this to no benefit.  That is why I am listing it last.  Turning down the light intensity may get you to the point plants on the floor of a taller tank like a 29 gallon are not getting enough par to grow healthy, but plenty of light for algae… if you are seeing sparse spindly growth of your plants they are exerting all sorts of energy to grow up closer to the light.  Increasing the intensity might well be in order…    I also go with a siesta period with lights on from 4:00 to 9:00 twice a day. For me this works well as I get up at 4:00 am every day and leave around 6:30 and get home around 6:30 and go to sleep around 9:00.  It allows me to enjoy my tanks when I am home. I recognize most people do not wake as early, however in the non co2 injected tank, having a 4-5 hour light period followed by at least a few hours of no light allows co2 levels to recover some before next photoperiod.  It is a strategy some non co2 tank owners have reported benefit from.  I tend to prefer to err on the side of a bit too much light than not enough.  And removing leaves algae starts attacking..  but there have been times I knocked back the photo period a bit too…

definitely have timers on your lights.  Light is a condition the plants will optimize for and they do better with stability in their conditions…