# How far can I push liquid carbon without harm to plants and livestock?



## mike b (5 Feb 2015)

Hi all. I'm new here so please be patient with my lack of knowledge  at the moment I'm using easy carbo simply for its convenience. I double dose as it says I can do on the instructions which for my 180 litre tank works out at approx 7.2ml (which is probably over dosing as the tank won't hold 180 litres). I want to add more carbon as I'm getting some green hair algae on a sword plant. Thanks to Clive I've got my distribution of nutrients better by adding a power head and my turnover rate is around 10x per hour (can't thank Clive enough for his patience and excellent advice). I'm dosing macros and micros in accordance to ei. Just wondering if I can dose easy carbo higher than the instructions state? I know some plants such as riccia and egeria can't handle higher dosages but I don't keep these plants. Also I know it can be toxic to livestock. Any advice is appreciated.


----------



## Andy Thurston (5 Feb 2015)

I used to dose 3.5x normal dose into one of my tanks. Fish and shrimp seemed fine but with higher doses Shrimplet and fry survival rates can be seriously affected. I only had one shrimplet survive from a berried female which i received from one of the forum sponsors.
The best thing to do is up the dose a little bit weekly and monitor the tank  closely
If breeding shrimp are present then 2-2.5x dose is about maximum


----------



## mike b (5 Feb 2015)

Hey thanks for your advice. So live stock seemed fine with 3.5x normal dose. I'm not breeding shrimp so this isn't an issue. Did you see and affects on your plants with 3.5x dosing? Quicker growth rates or disintegrating plants?


----------



## Andy Thurston (5 Feb 2015)

Only disintegrating riccia and algae but that was one of the reasons i was using  the higher doses.
Plant growth didn't really increase that much 



 
Fissidens did ok but some mosses can be sensitive 


 
These photos were taken the day i added pressurised co2 everything was growing nice and healthy on the 3.5x lc and ei diet before that
35l tank with 16w t5 lights crammed into the hood, even the hc did ok


----------



## kirk (5 Feb 2015)

That fissidens looks great.


----------



## mike b (5 Feb 2015)

How long were you dosing 3x normal dose of easy carbo? Fissidens does look amazing.


----------



## Andy Thurston (5 Feb 2015)

mike b said:


> How long were you dosing 3x normal dose of easy carbo? Fissidens does look amazing.


About 4-5 months
I nearly forgot, i read somewhere liquid carbon lower o2 in the tank
Better to make small increases than risk killing things with a big increase
I was lucky with that tank the fissidens was the healthiest plant I'd grown at that point then i stripped it down because the trickle filter stopped me adding the amount of co2 I wanted
I now have my cube and I can pump crazy amounts of gas in there and I still dose 2x lc in there too


----------



## mantis147 (10 Feb 2015)

Got to get me some of that fissidens! Nice tank!


----------



## naughtymoose (10 Feb 2015)

Ditto re the fiss.

I've been using Hoggie's Glut in my 40L for a while now. I recently upped the dose a bit. It is the only thing that I've changed recently, and I think this may have been what caused 3 of my little Salt & Pepper catfish to snuff it. I probably upped the dose too quickly, as Big Clown alludes to.


----------



## Andy Thurston (10 Feb 2015)

Small catfish always seemed the first to show distress in my lc tank when i had them in there.


----------

