# Seachem Flourish Excel and Drop Checker - Possibly a Naive Question



## Andy North (Feb 24, 2013)

I have a tiny aquarium (3G) and use Seachem Flourish Excel. My understanding, being an absolute beginner, is that this product makes C available to plants but not in the form of CO2. Therefore: would using a drop checker make any sense in this aquarium? If not, how can I check whether I am making available to my plants an optimal amount of C?

Thanks!


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

the way a drop check works is by the drop of ph and kh when using real co2, liquid co2 like excel won't drop the ph or kh, therefore a drop checker would be useless to you. Only way you can tell if your dosing the right amount of excel is by looking at the growth of your plants. However this is also still hard since there are other factors like light and fertilizers. Your thinking too much into it. If dosing excel you notice good decent rate of growth stop thinking about it. If it's still not growing fast enough dose a little more. If after dosing more, it's still slow look into your lights. Lights will drive the growth, co2 if food for plants to grow fast. Having both will make your plants grow super fast.


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## Andy North (Feb 24, 2013)

Thanks a lot for your response! You are probably right: I do think too much! I have a 15W compact fluorescent light and I do fertilize. I thought that would be lots of light but I read that for really small tanks like mine you can go up to 10WPG and more... My plants are growing pretty well, anyway, and I have no algae.

I guess I should not complain...


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

I have a think 23 watt "plant" bulb over my 5.5 gallon and I have great growth and lots of algae which is mostly on the driftwood. I need to go with a lower bulb


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