# Exel and Baby RCS / Cories



## zfarsh (Apr 7, 2011)

Hi, 

Has anyone tried Exel in a tank with baby rcs? I have some string alga hiding in my plants, and I wanted to first try a full dose (not 2x or 3x dose though), with a 3 day blackout and water change. I also have baby snails (Spixis / ramshorns / mts) and more importantly, baby dwarf cories. Any experience you may have with Exel would be nice. I want to use it for about 3 - 4 days in a row only. Another finiky fish I have is ottos, which have been with me for many months now.


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

are you spot treating? or are you just dosing excel in the tank? 

if spot treating just use a dropper or syringe. just make sure nothing comes near you when you spot treat it. you have to spot treat it three to four times i think. You might have cladophora and my shrimps eat hair/thread algae but do not touch cladophora which may look like thread/hair algae but its a monster to get rid of. People suggest using hydrogen peroxide instead as it is not as harmful as excel.


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## zfarsh (Apr 7, 2011)

I was going to use in the whole tank, as there is a lot of moss / plants everywhere, and wanted to get rid of them all. I can use Hydrogen Peroxide, but how much (in ml) do I use in a 10g tank?


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

i dont remember the dosage for hydrogen peroxide i hope someone with this experience can chime in and help you.


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## zfarsh (Apr 7, 2011)

Anyone know?


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

is the affect moss/plants rooted? as in is the moss tied on something. if it's tied on driftwood or an ornament why don't you just take it out put a sprayer on a bottle of H202 and spray the affect moss/plants outside the tank then put it in a bucket of tank water and take it out and put it back in your tank after like an hour?

for a whole tank treatment with shrimp I would experiment with it first do like 1ml of H202 per gallon, If algae is not slowly dying after a week and no shrimp death I would go 2ml per gallon. For me personally If I get really bad algae in the whole tank I nuke the tank because I know this will kill all algae in less then a week. 2 tablespoons of H202 per 10 gallons. Make sure you either take the media out of your filter or turn off your filter, if you have to turn off your filter then put in a powerhead. leave it like that for like 30-1hr then do a water change >30% after water change dose 5ml of Excel per 10g and turn your filter back on. But since you have shrimp I wouldn't do this nuke.


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

coldmantis said:


> is the affect moss/plants rooted? as in is the moss tied on something. if it's tied on driftwood or an ornament why don't you just take it out put a sprayer on a bottle of H202 and spray the affect moss/plants outside the tank then put it in a bucket of tank water and take it out and put it back in your tank after like an hour?
> 
> for a whole tank treatment with shrimp I would experiment with it first do like 1ml of H202 per gallon, If algae is not slowly dying after a week and no shrimp death I would go 2ml per gallon. For me personally If I get really bad algae in the whole tank I nuke the tank because I know this will kill all algae in less then a week. 2 tablespoons of H202 per 10 gallons. Make sure you either take the media out of your filter or turn off your filter, if you have to turn off your filter then put in a powerhead. leave it like that for like 30-1hr then do a water change >30% after water change dose 5ml of Excel per 10g and turn your filter back on. But since you have shrimp I wouldn't do this nuke.


If you turn of the filter off for 1hr or so would it affect the BB? How long can we leave H2O2 in the tank for?


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

xriddler said:


> If you turn of the filter off for 1hr or so would it affect the BB? How long can we leave H2O2 in the tank for?


you turned the filter off if there is media in it so that H202 don't kill all the good bacteria in your media. If you take the media out of your filter you can leave it on. For how long to leave it in tank, it really depends on what your doing small dosing or nuking. If your nuking leave it in there for like 30-1hr then change water. If your just spot treating with H202 I don't change water. I wish I took a pic of my 40g breeder, lots of my stem plants had some hair algae/brown algae. and all my hc cuba had small hair algae. Some clado too, after around 3-4 days all turned white and fish ate it. My tank is completely algae free except for dust algae on glass(nothing kills that except for razor blade).


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## zfarsh (Apr 7, 2011)

thanks for the response. I don't want to nuke, there are too many creatures in there:

RCS, Amanos, Spixi, Ramshorns, MTS, Dwarf Cories, and Ottos. There are some baby RCS and Cories too. There is a moss wall, 3 branches with plants, and some rooted plants, so I cant do removal very easily without seriously disturbing the tank.

I have turned off the lights, and did water change of 30 - 40% for two days now, and have stopped feeding (or reduced). I don't have an explosion of string alga, just that they pop off sometimes, and I could see them or feel them with my scissors between the mosses, and feel if I don't do anything, they might get everywhere. I am hoping this will slow down or reduce the string alga and that some of my shrimps / snails will eat some of it. Furthermore, I have put some barley in filter bags and added them to my filters, so that the shrimp / snails don't eat them. I am hopping this help stop new growth.

Now for some light treatment of the existing string alga:
So you mentioned 1 ml H2O2 per gallon, ie ~ 8 - 10 ml. I can try that, or even half to see how things go. The question is, do I need to turn off my filter still with these kind of dosing, when I am not nuking? If so, for how long? Would this also be the case if I was doing excel treatment at 1x full dose for a few days? I don't have Excel yet, as the petstore near our house didn't have it, but might pick it up, if it is safer to use than the H2O2 and doesn't require removing filter media. I also do some manual removals when I see some spots of string alga alone or easy to remove.


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

excel overdose will certainly kill shrimp. If you do a serach you will find many post about it online. this is only reason i dose only half the recommended in my tank. and i spot treated with excel, it killed one of my cherries as i squirted my clado and the cherry jumped right into my excel syringe. so i gave up and just manually removed thick clado whenever i cant stand it anymore.


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

coldmantis said:


> you turned the filter off if there is media in it so that H202 don't kill all the good bacteria in your media. If you take the media out of your filter you can leave it on. For how long to leave it in tank, it really depends on what your doing small dosing or nuking. If your nuking leave it in there for like 30-1hr then change water. If your just spot treating with H202 I don't change water. I wish I took a pic of my 40g breeder, lots of my stem plants had some hair algae/brown algae. and all my hc cuba had small hair algae. Some clado too, after around 3-4 days all turned white and fish ate it. My tank is completely algae free except for dust algae on glass(nothing kills that except for razor blade).


Did you tank have shrimps in there and did you spot treat this tank or nuked it?


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

xriddler said:


> Did you tank have shrimps in there and did you spot treat this tank or nuked it?


only shrimp in there is amanos lots of them and I nuked the tank. I didn't have a choice algae was bad and it wasn't getting any better.


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