DIY Glutaraldehyde

[Consigliere]

Does anyone do DIY glutaraldehyde dosing?  Essentially its the Carbon source in Excel. Apparently you can get it as a solution typically used for sterilization but will work for freshwater plant dosing.  Does anyone do this?  Where do you get your glutaraldehyde and what product are you using?

[Consigliere]

Found some info on how to get a hold of this stuff in Ontario.  It works out to be fairly cheap.  For those that do Excel dosing, it would be worthwhile looking into switching.  You can dose carbon DIY for 25% the cost of Excel this way and is quite easy.  Any interest just reply to this post

[daworldisblack]

Listening

[Consigliere]

Medical Mall and Vereburn medical supply carries a product called Metricide 14 and I've confirmed Vereburn ships to Ontario.  Medical Mall I assume will do it as well.   Costs about $30 per gallon with shipping if you order 2 gallons.  This is equivalent to about 8 gallons of Excel.

Metricide 14 is 2.6% glut vs 1.5% in Excel.  You can using a dosing calc to match whatever dosing you are doing today.  glut.petalphile.com is one good one.  Don't buy the other metricide products.  They have different ingredients not good for your aquarium.

There's the sum of the best info for the time I'm willing to spend researching the topic.  You can likely find it totally local and no shipping required at a medical supply store but I'm not going to spend the time calling around until I need to do another order in a year or so.

[daworldisblack]

Sweet! Thanks! Will look it up!

[charlie]

Thanks for sharing Dave, good info.
Regards

[Consigliere]

As an update here, I received 2 gallons of Metricide 14 about 2 weeks ago.  3.5 weeks ago, we had a new baby and during the weekend in the hospital my pressurized CO2 ran out.  Came home to a tank that was growing hair algae like crazy.  I had not received the Metricide yet at this point so I did a black out for 3 or 4 days...I was occupied with other things anyways and didn't have time to deal with this.

When the Metricide arrived, I mixed it with aged tap water down to 1.5% glut content.  I've been dosing this without CO2 injection for about 2 weeks.  I've been dosing about 3-4x recommended dosing of 1mL/10gal.  After two weeks, all hair algae is gone, GSA is essentially gone, with just some diatom algae remaining.  Figure the diatom gives the plecs and otos something to munch on so am not too concerned.  I'm going to be trying to figure out the cost of Metricide dosing now that the tank has established steady state and is algae free, but base on initial assumptions this may actually be a cheaper way of providing carbon than pressurized CO2.  No worries about degassing etc is nice in my 250G setup.  Considering I could sell my regulator and tank and pay for a years supply of Metricide I may go this way long term.  The only downside is I have higher pH than I would like to have.  CO2 provided some acidity to the water that is beneficial for the fish I am keeping. 

I would highly recommend this product for all planters, especially for tank startups and fighting algae blooms.  It has taken my tank from a 250G hair algae nightmare to pristine condition in two weeks without me once having to go in and pick off algae by hand.  Likely saved 4-5 hours of work, so in my mind has already paid for itself.

[Peekay]

  3.5 weeks ago, we had a new baby

Congratulations!    

Also, thanks for the update on the metricide.  Good to hear it's working so well for you!

[bizfromqc]

Thanks for the info, will definitely be looking this up.

[bizfromqc]

So yesterday I called "Ontario Medical Supplies" on Algoma here in Ottawa and asked for the product. To my surprise they said "Yes, we have it, it's X$ for 1 gallon".

Great! So this morning I stop by before coming in to work and ask about the product. They check their system, they can't find it, all they can find is another Metri"something" product that I looked at and it didn't even have details on what was in there so I didn't buy it.

What a waste of my time, why would you tell someone you have a product when you don't really have it.

[pm]

What a waste of my time, why would you tell someone you have a product when you don't really have it.

Yeah, that sucks.  I can see it happening with equipment, where the "1" in stock is the demo model, but for suplies, especially those not likely to be shoplifted, it is just pure stupidity that causes this.

[daworldisblack]

When the Metricide arrived, I mixed it with aged tap water down to 1.5% glut content.  I've been dosing this without CO2 injection for about 2 weeks.  I've been dosing about 3-4x recommended dosing of 1mL/10gal.  After two weeks, all hair algae is gone, GSA is essentially gone, with just some diatom algae remaining.

I would highly recommend this product for all planters, especially for tank startups and fighting algae blooms.  It has taken my tank from a 250G hair algae nightmare to pristine condition in two weeks without me once having to go in and pick off algae by hand.  Likely saved 4-5 hours of work, so in my mind has already paid for itself.

I was curious as to how your crypts fared? Any melt? Or any other effects to plants for that matter?

[Consigliere]

The crypts had been in the tank for a while before I started using the metrcide.  Since the addition, they have all grown at a faster rate than before.  Haven't seen any ill effects on plants so far.  Vals I don't believe survive use of Excel so I think the same would be true for any glut product.

[bettabreeder]

What type of fauna do you have in the tank? If you have some how do they fare?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[touchofsky]

Vals do OK with Excel if you start with a low dose and work your way up.  Don't use the big initial dose or the large water change doses, as recommended on the label.  I start with a half daily dose, and do that for a couple of weeks, then go to the full daily dose.  I haven't had any problems with vals doing it that way.  I have only used Excel and can't comment on metricide, though, however, I think it would be the same.

[bizfromqc]

Vals do OK with Excel if you start with a low dose and work your way up.  Don't use the big initial dose or the large water change doses, as recommended on the label.  I start with a half daily dose, and do that for a couple of weeks, then go to the full daily dose.  I haven't had any problems with vals doing it that way.  I have only used Excel and can't comment on metricide, though, however, I think it would be the same.

I wish I knew this before I started dosing Excel, my vals all melted away. I used the recommended startup dose with the daily dose. About a week in, they we're paper thin and I removed them from the tank...

Oh well, live and learn 

[touchofsky]

They probably would have come back in time.  Sort of like crypts do when they melt initially.

[bizfromqc]

For people interested, I'm setting up a group order. View group orders sub-forum for details:
http://ovas.ca/forum/index.php?topic=52987.0