Rivercats, question for you

[malonbl]

I have ordered my metricide 14 to start dosing liquid carbon in my low-tech, low-light tank. You have helped me with the details, so I will not rehash all of that.

Just wanted to touch on a quick point you made. You mentioned starting conservatively with the dose due to my corydora habrosus. I plan to start at 1 ml/10 gallons daily. Or would you start every other day?

So, are corydoras just more sensitive to glutaraldehyde? Do you think even this conservative dose will stress them?

By the way, I have gotten some BBA. I plan to back off my photoperiod to 7 hours (from 8) and hope also that the glut dosing will help. Would it be wise to perform my daily dosings of glut straight onto different areas of the BBA or will just dosing straight into the tank have the same effect?

Thanks for all of your help as usual.

 

[ArtistGardener]

Found this thread when searching for glut and corys together. Did you end up using it with them and did it work out? I have lost so many corys in my planted tanks and am thinking it is the glut--which is a low dose.

 

[Darkseid76]

I'm not River but I can answer your BBA question. The best way is to directly squirt the Met onto the trouble areas.

This is easiest with the filters off to stop water flow. If you're BBA is real bad you might also have to use a blackout to starve the algae of light altogether.

I'm my experience none of my cories have ever shown any ill effects from liquid carbon use.

 

[clarkm]

I dose 20 ml in my 58 gallon planted tank daily and have Cory's and they have never shown bad effects from it

 

[ArtistGardener]

I'm my experience none of my cories have ever shown any ill effects from liquid carbon use.

That's what almost everyone says but I have ruled out everything else. I am guessing it is some combination--my hard water with glut or some such thing. At any rate, I won't be putting any more corydoras into my planted tanks until I switch from liquid carbon to CO2.

For the original poster, liquid carbon does work great to treat bba.

 

[malonbl]

Wow, surprised to see my thread from 3 weeks ago get bumped back up top.

Artist, to answer your question, yes, I did start dosing glut. I am dosing metricide 14 daily, which I understand to be twice the strength of excel. I started very conservative as follows:

0.5 ml/10 gallons x 1 week, then
0.75 ml/10 gallons x 1 week, then
1 ml/10 gallons x 1 week (where I currently am)

So, I am still just at a 40% dose compared to Seachem's excel instructions. I plan to keep working this dose up by 0.25 ml/10 gallon increments weekly, while watching my corydoras behavior. So far, so good.

As for corydoras sensitivity, I thought that the pygmy and habrosus species were said to be the most sensitive, but I am not sure how good this information is. Have you been losing small corydoras or more "standard size" corydoras?

ClarkM, question for you. You are dosing approximately 1 ml/3 gallons daily without harm to your corydoras. Are you using excel (1 ml/2 gallons instructions) or metricide 14 (1 ml/4 gallons instructions)? Curious to know whether they are tolerating a 66% dose (excel) or a 150% dose (metricide).

 

[Mebbid]

For future reference - If you want an answer to a question it's best to either PM the person or not specifically address them in the post title.

I have cory cats in my 10g and dose 5ml of metricide 14 daily. That's at 10x the normal dosage of excel. In that tank I have had the same panda corys for closing in on a year now.

 

[clarkm]

Just using excell for now. When I run out I will be ordering metricide as it's cheaper.

 

[malonbl]

Thanks for the info, Clark. But in reference to Mebbid's post, his cory cats are tolerating a very large dose, so that should make us both feel good.

Mebbid, how do you figure this to be 10 times the excel dose? I may be wrong, but you are dosing 1 ml/2 gallons of metricide which is equivalent to 1 ml/1 gallon of excel. I don't have a bottle of excel to check, but I understand the directions to be 1 ml/2 gallons, meaning you are dosing at 2x the excel directions. I ask only because I want to be sure I understand glut dosing correctly.

By the way, I appreciate the information about the post title. I figured that was the case after I didn't receive a reply. In fact, I tried to go back and edit the title, but couldn't figure out how to do that. Ironically, I PM'ed a question to a moderator on another forum about a topic I knew he was very familiar with. He PM'ed me back an answer but asked that I post it "public" in the future so that all board members could benefit from the conversation. Again, thanks for letting me know about proper etiquette on this forum.

 

[Mebbid]

Unless it changed, the dosage on a bottle of excel is 1ml / 10g.

 

[jehenry89]

I have ordered my metricide 14 to start dosing liquid carbon in my low-tech, low-light tank. You have helped me with the details, so I will not rehash all of that.

Just wanted to touch on a quick point you made. You mentioned starting conservatively with the dose due to my corydora habrosus. I plan to start at 1 ml/10 gallons daily. Or would you start every other day?

So, are corydoras just more sensitive to glutaraldehyde? Do you think even this conservative dose will stress them?

By the way, I have gotten some BBA. I plan to back off my photoperiod to 7 hours (from 8) and hope also that the glut dosing will help. Would it be wise to perform my daily dosings of glut straight onto different areas of the BBA or will just dosing straight into the tank have the same effect?

Thanks for all of your help as usual.

I am not going to speak for Rivercats however when I had BBA she told me to turn my photo period to 6 hours a day and use hydrogen peroxide as a direct treatment (it is cheaper than excel). Turn off the filter or any power heads you have so that the water is still. Use a dropper and squirt the peroxide directly on to the infected area. You may have to do it a few times but it will eventually turn white and die off. You can use between 1-2ML pre gallon, I wouldn't use anymore than that.

 

[malonbl]

Thanks for the reply. Thankfully, that BBA I had was just on the dw. I removed the driftwood during a water change and scrubbed it all away with a toothbrush. It hasn't come back, yet. Fingers crossed.