Is Seachem Flourish Excel as Good as Co2?

Seachem Flourish Excel is an alternative to dosing a planted tank with gaseous CO2. This product is a liquid form of bio available carbon and provides all the carbon needed for extreme plant growth that would normally be added by a gaseous CO2 kit. The available carbon that this product provides can be immediately taken in and used by all aquarium plants*. Using Flourish Excel on a well-lit and fertilized planted tank will provided the carbon needed to cause your plants to pearl, but you can also use this product in conjunction with gaseous CO2 to get maximum bio available carbon for your plants, but this may produce low pH levels in your aquarium water. Seachem Flourish Excel also promotes ferrous iron with your aquarium which is more easily used by aquarium plants than ferric iron. Flourish Excel is a great product for use on planted aquariums up to 200l and should be dosed every day or every other day, as it has an availability of about 24 hours. In aquariums larger than this, it becomes less value for money than gaseous dosing methods. For aquariums such as nano or pico planted aquariums, this is the ideal solution to giving your plants the carbon they need without buying a micro CO2 unit. This product also allows you to have an air stone in your aquarium which is not available to users of gaseous CO2 due to the degassing effect; Flourish Excel is unaffected. Seachem Flourish Excel has a reported side effect of killing black beard and other types of nuisance algae in the aquarium. I personally have found this to be true, and in aquariums which I have dosed flourish Excel I have found that the growth of nuisance algae severely inhibited. Also in aquariums that had nuisance algae present, dosing of Flourish Excel significantly reduced the algae population after a few weeks of consistent dosing.