How Does Liquid Carbon Work?

[daizeUK]

I'm using Easycarbo and wondering how it adds carbon in a way that plants can use it.  I've had a brief look but struggling to find ingredients or information about it!
 
I always assumed it simply contained carbonates and that got me thinking - I have really hard water with loads of carbonates already so why am I bothering to add more?
 
I suppose it's not that simple?  The only information I've found so far is that liquid carbon acts 'as a reducing agent'.  I'm not sure what they're trying to say unless it means that oxygen is removed from the water so that more CO2 is absorbed directly from the air?
 
I also see a lot of people saying that it contains gluteraldehyde which acts as an algaecide (it's a disinfectant) but I'm not sure if this is added purely as algaecide or as a side effect of the carbonating process.
 
I'm just guessing here, does anybody know the truth about this stuff?

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Active ingredient is glutaraldehyde. That will give you a starting point for research... Long story short, it isn't just a carbonate. It's a string of 5 carbons in the single molecule.

http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutaraldehyde

 

[ian]

It also strips leaves of there biofilm, which aids absorption. This is why you will get leave melt and why it acts as a good algicide.

 

[daizeUK]

Interesting, thanks!  So the glutaraldehyde itself is actually the source of carbon (not just added as algaecide) and I assume easier for plants to absorb than carbonates.  I just wanted to know I was getting my moneys worth out of it! 

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Well, honestly, if you want to get your money's worth, injecting CO2 is more economical.  But on such a small tank, it may not be worth the hassle.  

 

[daizeUK]

To be honest I've not seen a huge difference since starting to use it.  But then again I've had very low lighting until recently, upgraded from 14W to 29W in a 17G tank.  Also I've mainly got slow-growing plants like crypts, microsorium and anubias.  I chiefly wanted the liquid carbon to help my stem plants which have done nothing but melt away.  First I lost my vallis and egeria densa and now my limnophila and cabomba continue to struggle.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I know that egeria densa is not tolerant of this product (and similar products), and I think, but can't confirm, that vallis may be as well.
 
I'd heard of someone using it with success... but they had to 'acclimate' the plant to it, and used partial dose (1/3 I think) for about a week or more, then slowly bumped it up and up.  Eventually the plants took off, according to that person.  But, I have no experience like that.

 

[daizeUK]

The egeria densa and vallis both melted before I resorted to EasyCarbo, I'm afraid.
I have been ramping up the dosage gradually, currently at about 3/4 max dose.
Who knows I may see better results with increased dosage as well as increased lighting!  I'll keep trying it.

 

[SLIM]

I'd heard of someone using it with success... but they had to 'acclimate' the plant to it, and used partial dose (1/3 I think) for about a week or more, then slowly bumped it up and up.  Eventually the plants took off, according to that person.  But, I have no experience like that.

This was probably me. I have had huge success in the past with easycarbo with the slowly add method with all my plants including vallis

The egeria densa and vallis both melted before I resorted to EasyCarbo, I'm afraid.
I have been ramping up the dosage gradually, currently at about 3/4 max dose.
Who knows I may see better results with increased dosage as well as increased lighting!  I'll keep trying it.

What do you mean they melted before you resorted to easycarbo? Melted before you even added carbon???
Also what other ferts are you dosing alongside carbon?
How long is your photoperiod?
And I realise this thread a little old so how are the plants doing now?

 

[daizeUK]

The vallis was one of the first plants I tried in my tank.  I envisioned a forest of vallis in the rear right corner.  Well it grew strongly for a couple of weeks and sent out lots of runners but then melted.  I was half expecting the old leaves to melt anyway so that was fine.  The new growth got to about half height and then all the new growth slowly went brown and melted away too.  The egeria did pretty much the same thing.   At this time I had 0.8 WPG and no carbon.
 
I've been dosing Flourish (not Excel, just Flourish) the whole time.  My tap water comes with about 40ppm NO3 as standard so the plants have plenty of nitrates too!
 
Photoperiod is 8:00-14:00 and 16:00-19:00, so that's 9 hours total at 0.8 WPG.
A few weeks ago I got an additional T8 tube which is on from about 10:15-13:45 and 16:15-18:45, which gives me 1.7 WPG for six hours in total.
 
Everything grows very slowly in my tank so not much has changed yet.  I still trim the bottom stems and yellowing leaves off the cabomba every week but I still put that down to insufficient lighting.  I'm now also trying some Hygrophila polysperma to see if that fares better.

 

[SLIM]

Vallis can be a very fussy plant. All depend whether it likes your water or not tbh.
Photoperiod is fine however wpg is so out of date and inaccurate with todays lighting its hard to say if your lighting is addiquate or not.
Its the Kelvin Par and Heat temperature that really matters.
So yea it could very well be your lighting if your struggling with other plants too.

Do you have any "easy" plants such as crypts or anubias?
If so how are they doing?

 

[daizeUK]

Yeah unfortunately I don't know the PAR rating of my lights!  They're both daylight bulbs though so about 6.5k I think.
 
I have several crypts & anubias which are all doing well.  The balansae melted at first but seems to be growing back well enough now.
 
The vallis surprised me because it is supposed to like hard water so I thought it would grow well.

 

[DrRob]

Vallis is indeed picky stuff. I used to run multiple tanks in Birmingham on a soft tap water source. Some tanks it would grow, others, with identical lighting rigs, photoperiods and maintenance regimes would end up full of vallis goo.