# What do you dose for metricide?



## neven (May 15, 2010)

I don't care about co2 is better and related banter, what i am after here is a compendium of how members use metricide for substitution or along side CO2. There are plenty of members here who use it and even more who ask about it.

The reason is i added a liquid substitution section to the co2 thread a while back, but i know very little people use the recommended dosage from flourish. I know results will vary based on tank size, lighting, plant load, fish load, and fert levels. Fyi, excels dose works out to *0.06 mL / gallon / day* of metricide.

You can also say your experience playing with the amount, but please stay out of the thread if you are just here to preach go pressurized, as i am not here to preach against pressurized. There is always risk going above the recommended dose on everything, but it would be nice to actually figure out what is the actual threshold is. Plus, gathering peoples experiences will help others figure out where they feel comfortable starting, rather than shooting in the dark.

Format: *x mL / gallon / x days : what you keep successfully, what died.
*

0.25 mL / gallon / day: Amano/cherry Shrimp, community tank fish; No livestock deaths or Plant melts
0.34 mL / gallon / day: Unable to introduce invertebrates despite several attempts, Current livestock showed no signs of stress; No plant melts. Changing regime back to 0.25 in prep for shrimp introduction. -added June 12th, 2011
0.4 mL / gallon / day: a couple shrimp deaths, plants were fine, dropped back down to 0.25 soon after.
1.0 mL / gallon / day: Shrimp deaths. Used to kill a BBA outbreak over the course of 2 weeks.

all my tanks are at recommended EI regimes, Medium light/low light thresh hold, no co2. some tanks are now on co2


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## RDonald (Apr 25, 2010)

I am dosing Metricide along with DIY yeast CO2 in both my 55g and 25g heavily planted tanks. I used to use Metricide every second or third day but have recently started increasing the dosage levels slowly and I'm at these levels now

Tank One

55g - 25ml on water change day, 50% change, once per week. 15ml per day six days a week no ill effects on fish or plants (including the Vals) Have been dosing this level for the past three weeks after I noticed a small amount of BBA forming. The BBA is slowly turning pink and dying back now, I don't think I'll increase the dosage on this tank any further. I've ganged up 2 DIY yeast bottles (changing one bottle at a time) so I'm getting 2-3 bps and running that through a powerhead with the impeller modded to chop up the bubbles to a fine mist.

Tank 2
25g - 15ml on water change day, 50% water change once per week. 10ml per day six days per week. This tank has a heavier infestation of BBA and I'm trying to knock it back, started this level of dosing two weeks ago. No ill effects on 5 japonica shrimp, 14 Tiger barbs, 3 pepper cories, 3 oto's. The BBA is turning pink and dying back. Coupled with DIY yeast at about 1-2 bps running straight into the canister filter intake.

Both of my tanks are heavily planted with Cabomba, Anubias, Blyxa, Giant Vals, several swords of unknown species (18" tall and growing out of tanks) lots of java moss, several java ferns of different varieties.

Cheers,
Ryan in Richmond


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## Edarion (Apr 21, 2010)

Can you get rid of Algae without this stuff?


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## CRS Fan (Apr 21, 2010)

I'm a mad chemist with the stuff. I usually dose 1ml/gallon every day or every other day. I have not really noticed any direct significant deaths however. Fish die over time and I don't believe there is a direct correlation between the dosing and the deaths over time. My Blue Pearl Shrimp and a couple of CRS are fine at 1 ml/gallon/day but I usually dose every other day. My Blue Pearls are breeding like crazy, I think I have blue substrate now .

Best Regards,

Stuart


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## neven (May 15, 2010)

added another dosage i used, and Stuart, you are indeed a mad scientist, but your lighting and filtration tend to be higher than mine, which could be why you have more success with higher dosages.

the reason i tried higher was i had no more invertebrates in my tank (amanos died of old age, and cherry shrimps died off during some sort of crash) and i read that 3 ppm was the limit, so i did some math to see what it would equal, went to around 85% of that value to account for substrate and decor volume. Im not sure if i calculated it wrong or not, but i had no livestock deaths until i tried introducing shrimp.


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## waynet (Apr 22, 2010)

yup. I think he is a mad scientist. I learned my lesson today about using chemical.

I soaked my Java moss in 3% hydrogen peroxide for 10 minutes to kill the algae. But it looks like it also damaged the java moss.

I think by the time the Java moss recovery, the hair algae will grow back as well.

The worst thing I did was soaked the sponge filter in the same solution to kill the hair algae now I also killed all the good bacteria. After changing 1/6 of the water, my tank is kind of cloudy.

Luckily my CRS did not show any sign of healthy problems so far. But I think they have nothing to eat since all the micro-organisms living in the java moss are all killed.

Wayne.



neven said:


> added another dosage i used, and Stuart, you are indeed a mad scientist, but your lighting and filtration tend to be higher than mine, which could be why you have more success with higher dosages.
> 
> the reason i tried higher was i had no more invertebrates in my tank (amanos died of old age, and cherry shrimps died off during some sort of crash) and i read that 3 ppm was the limit, so i did some math to see what it would equal, went to around 85% of that value to account for substrate and decor volume. Im not sure if i calculated it wrong or not, but i had no livestock deaths until i tried introducing shrimp.


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## neven (May 15, 2010)

peroxide (h2o2) seems harmless, but i learnt a long time ago that it gets talked up a bit too much. the only advantage it has is its able to breakdown in water very quickly, making it ideal for spot treatments only. Soaking things in your standard 3% pharmacy solution is about the same effectiveness of bleach, kills most live things. It is great at removing stains on fabrics atleast  What metricide/excel has over peroxide is that it can be utilized by plants as a carbon source, which allows them to ramp up growth in non co2 tanks to outcompete algae for nutrients


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