[brooklyngal]

I'm going away for 2 months this summer and my father is taking care of my tank. I'm trying to find a happy medium for dosing that doesn't require a crazy amount of attention on his part.

it's a 40 breeder with 2 finnex stingrays for lighting. substrate is floramax topped with playsand.

currently I'm dosing daily with 1 capful of excel. I'm noticing increased growth after only 1 week of dosing and the hair algae I had been noticing has gone away almost completely.

I may switch to dry fertilizer eventually, but I like the ease of seachem liquid fertilizers for now. I was thinking I would order flourish comprehensive, iron, potassium, nitrogen and phosphate and dose according to the bottle (or the seachem nutrient chart they have). I would be asking him to do a minimum of 25% weekly water changes, preferably closer to 50%.

I'm here until the end of june so I have some time to get everything on a schedule.

is this an OK plan? this is the first tank that I'm thinking about dosing in; all my other tanks the plants just fended for themselves.

 

[Fishumms]

I've done excel additions and Flourish additions to tanks in the past for years without water changes and I didn't notice anything bad. I mean I did weekly water changes, but that was it. I don't know if that counts as a real "answer". I didn't know you were supposed to that way anyway. You'll want to make sure you've been doing it for a long time on the same schedule though, plants react a lot to changes like that.

 

[Dead2fall]

I have a high tech tank that's going on almost two months with no water change due to... Well due to life lol. You may or may not see some organics related algae but I think you'll be just fine. Excel doesn't accumulate, it dissipates. The ferts will potentially accumulate over time if you're dosing more than the plants can use (EI). I think you'll be fine honestly, especially if you have a decent plant load.