Aquarium Products: Flourish Excel by Seachem

At the beginning of this month I noticed a sudden explosion in the amount of hair algae in my tank and decided to do a little search on the plantedtank forums to see how people were getting rid of their hair algae issues. Many people were doing peroxide dips which requires you to mix a small amount of peroxide and water and dipping the affected plants. This seemed dangerous to the plant and it also would be inconvenient because my plants are placed strategically on the manzanita wood.

The other solutions to the problem was to: 

1) increase the amount of carbon in the tank 

2) do more frequent minor water changes

3) raise your lighting 

At first I started with increasing the carbon amount by using Flourish Excel by Seachem ($9 on amazon.com). I've been using this product for about a week now and noticed the first signs of it working within the first day. The hair algae began to change to a bright orange color and did not spread as quickly as it had before. Much of the algae began to shrink back and become lighter and weaker. 

The extra liquid carbon did not do any harm to my plants at all! Infact it has improved the growth in my plants. I was afraid that the moss would not do well with the added carbon, but there is an obvious difference between the dying hair algae and the growing moss. 

I started the use of the liquid carbon, by doing a major water change, then shocking the tank with a 2x higher concentration of the flourish excel carbon than recommended, then for every day after I added the recommended dose. 

I also started to do the minor water changes more often, and raised my lights from the tank as seen in my previous post. :) Really love the addition of flourish excel in my tank. I highly recommend it! 

P.S. In case you are wondering, the shrimp don't seem to have any negative effects from it either. 

DIY Project: Light Stand

Ever since the first week I bought my LED lights I've been complaining about how low to the tank the lights were.

Since I mainly have plants that do not require much light to grow, I've been OK leaving the tank lights on the lower setting. However, it's pretty annoying to know that I have a light with a high and low setting, but I can't use the high setting because it is too close to the water! With the lights close to the tank, it produces more heat and the brightness can also harm the leaves of the plants as well.



Challenges:
1) Try not to put holes in the wall. 
This is especially important since I do not own the house I'm living in. 
2) Don't cover the rim of the tank.
What's the point of a rimless tank, if you're gonna put a rim on it? 
3) Try not to make it ugly.
4) Make it simple.
Let's face it, I'm not the best at DIY, I didn't grow up learning to be a master craftsman, so let's not complicate things.
5) Keep the budget low.
I don't make enough money to make it expensive. If I did, I wouldn't be doing a DIY project, I'd just have someone else make it!

With all of these things in mind, I finally figured out what I could do to make my light stand. I went to HomeDepot and walked around the store about 50 times to get some inspiration from the materials they had. The employees looked at me like I was crazy (especially since I was wearing a dress and opened toed sandals). I walked into the lumber section and noticed the scrap wood section. I grabbed 4 pieces of 1ftx.75inx.75in pieces and had 2 pieces of 3ftx.75inx.75in cut in half for me. The total cost was about 5 dollars (that's goal number 5 settled). I also purchased some nails and a couple of corner braces (All together the cost was under $10).


At home I sketched up a little idea that looked something like this: (goals # 1,2, and 4 settled)

Then I started hammering away!

The end product looks like this:

The thin pieces of light colored wood makes it pleasing to look at, but it also does not take away from what's really important, which is the tank itself! (I think I settled goal #3 here). I'm so happy that I can finally turn on my light at full blast without having to worry about it heating up the water or burning the leaves. Hopefully this added light will make my plants grow like mad!