On 2005-01-17, Margolis wrote:
Your world must be very small. The only references I found about excel
being an algicide (algaecide) on google were posts you made. Nothing else.
No research by seachem anywhere indicating this is an algaecide. There is
no government regulation preventing seachem from calling an algicide and
algicide. There are regulations though that prevent companies from making
false claims.


You're the only person who has claimed anything absolutely.

http://www.aquabotanic.com/carbon.html

Can algae feed on Excel?
No. I'm sure this may raise a few eyebrows ;-) since at face value
this would be a reasonable expectation. But, for reasons Uncle Sam
won't let us discuss, all I can say is that algae can't feed on Excel
and I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to deduce why this
is the case (big picture folks, no chemistry involved ;-).

Gregory Morin, Ph.D. ~~~~~~~Research Director~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Seachem Laboratories, Inc. www.seachem.com 888-SEACHEM

Notice no claims of algicide by Seachem. Though, from the above
comments, it's not unreasonable to infer that perhaps Excel is at
some level an algicide, but Seachem is not willing, or not allowed, to
make sucha a claim. You are the one who, on anectdotal evidence,
claims absolutely that Excel is not an algicide and is in fact good to
grow algae with. Excel's primary claim has been that it can be a source
of carbon for plants:

http://www.aquabotanic.com/carbon.html

Does Excel's added carbon work enough to provide plants what they
need without the need of CO2 injection?
That depends on your definition of need ;-) We have been using the
product here for several years (during the testing phase) and all of
our planted tanks have been doing extraordinarily well. We do not use
any CO2 injection. We usually have to cut and trim every few weeks or
so. However, if your goal is to have the kind of growth where you
would need to cut and trim weekly (because the plants grow out of the
tank every week) then you're not going to see that with Flourish
Excel as the sole carbon source. But using Flourish Excel as the sole
source of carbon is certainly not going to leave the plants lacking
for carbon by any stretch.

Perhaps if you had given the water parameters of the tank in which algae
is growing well for you, there'd be a more interesting argument about
algae growth and how Excel may or may not be affecting it, not about your
flawed syllogism.

--
"I have to decide between two equally frightening options.
If I wanted to do that, I'd vote." --Duckman