Metricide 14 and Stagorn algae

I started dosing Metricide 14 last week after reading reviews about it being a good low cost carbon source.
I had a little staghorn algae and other green brush type algae that had slowly spread over the years and thought the Metricide might help.
Well after a week of daily dosing 3mm (the equivalent of an Excell dose) to my 40 gallon tank, the staghorn algae has exploded in growth. The plants and fish seem fine, even the Jungle Vals seem to tolerate it, but the algae appears to like this carbon source even more than the plants!
I have 63 watts of t5 lighting over the 40 gallon tank. Ferts consist of a weekly dose of Flourish.

I'm just dosing the tank. I guess I could target dose some of it but I would be leary of target dosing the staghorn algae growing on the vals.

FreshyFresh said:

gmh, I dose between 5-10mL daily with M14 for my 55g. Algae pretty much under control. I'd think you need to up your dosage a bit to find your proper balance.

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Hmm, it's a little scary to up the dose but I'll go up to 4mm and see what happens. I'm just surprised that adding carbon would result in making the algae worse instead of better. I recall having a similar type algae appear after adding chemipure to my canister filter. I removed that stuff after a week.

That's good to hear. I probably should have OD'd the first dose like the Excel folks recommend but I'm hoping to keep the Vals alive and well and decided to go with conservative dosage. So far the Jungle Vals seem to like the added carbon and the swords are going nuts (along with the algae).
As far as target dosing, this weird algae is all over the tank so it's sort of a lost cause when I only have 4mm a day to work with. I may target dose some with H202. That can be somewhat effective and safer for the Vals I think.