We had received reports from several hobbyists who said that they had seen Vallisneria melt when Flourish Excel™ was used with them. We also had reports of them thriving with Flourish Excel™. Because of this, we decided to do an experiment to test this in our lab. First we did a preliminary study with several val species (Amazon val, Italian val, corkscrew val, contortion val) with three tanks with different dosages: double dose, recommended dose, and a control with no Flourish Excel™.
In that initial experiment, we did see some melting of leaves in the tank receiving the double dose, though the damage wasn't extreme and new leaves grew in strongly to replace the lost vegetation. In the regularly dosed tank, we didn't see any issues. This was a short term experiment just to see if we could see an effect and based on the results, we launched a more carefully controlled experiment where we tried to more carefully determine the best guidelines for using Flourish Excel™ with vals.
We were able to make a few generalizations from our experiments and what we have heard from hobbyists:
- Large doses of Flourish Excel™ can sometimes cause some melting of the leaves of Vals. The larger the dose, the more likely there might be an issue.
- The damage is temporary; the roots aren't affected and it grows back strongly and tolerates future dosing of Flourish Excel™ even at higher than recommended doses.
- Vals normally tolerate the regular maintenance dose with no problem. In both experiments they weren’t affected by the daily dose, only higher doses.
- When other nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, iron, potassium) are dosed, Flourish Excel™ doses could be much higher without melting any leaves of the vals.
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