I love making various calculators for use in the aquarium hobby. I think they prove useful to others, and I often cruise over here to use them myself. I made a recent tool for calculating the dose of Seachem Prime, and I remembered another member of the Seachem family – Flourish Excel.
Seachem Flourish Excel is a great planted aquarium supplement that is useful for people who don’t want a pressurized CO2 system but want to improve their planted tank growth. I have a full review of Flourish Excel, where I discuss my experiences.
A quick and handy calculator is presented here to help you determine the quantity of Seachem Flourish Excel needed for your planted tank.
Instructions on How to Use the Seachem Flourish Excel Dosing Calculator:
Using the calculator is pretty simple – start by choosing your unit of measure (US Gallons, Liters, or US Quarts). Next, designate whether this is a daily dose or a post-water change dose (see below for additional information). Finally, enter the volume of water you are conditioning.
The output is in mL or drops. I have an article on why drops are a good unit of measure for nano tanks.
These disposable pipettes work great if drops work well as your unit of measure. Just draw up the fluid, dose the desired number of drops, and return the excess to the bottle. These pipettes also have markings to the nearest 1/2 mL and a capacity of up to 3 mL.
If you need something bigger, these syringes work well for up to 10 mL and have resolution (markings) to the nearest 1/10 mL. If you need more than 10 mL, you can, of course, dispense multiple syringe fulls.
Caveats to Using the Seachem Flourish Excel Dosing Calculator:
I want to emphasize that the dosing ratio is provided by Seachem in their instructions. The current instructions for Seachem Flourish Excel are found here and are as follows:
“On initial use or after a major (> 40%) water change, use 1 capful (5 mL) for every 40 L (10 US gallons). Thereafter use 1 capful for every 200 L (50 US gallons) daily or every other day. For smaller dosing please note that each cap thread is approximately 1 mL.”
I’ve added the bold bit above for emphasis. Make sure to pay attention to the difference between a daily dose and the initial dose. The higher initial (or post-water change) dose is higher, and the daily dose is much lower.
The ratios listed above (5 mL of Seachem Prime for each 200L and 40L of Water) are what I have built into the above calculator. I’m using the pharmaceutical standard of 20 drops in 1 mL.
