Omgosh I’ve been looking forward to this much-needed butt-whooping of the Flourish line ever since you first hinted at it! I literally just RAGE QUIT Seachem Flourish line stuff (except Equilibrium….I do like using it and it works for my extremely soft water) because the Iron ended up causing me horrendous algae and I was under-dosing it!! Absolutely ridiculous and so beyond expensive. Stupid expensive for everything. Nope nope nope. Easy Green, FlorinMulti and Easy Root Tabs. Done.

I’m assuming you’re not looking at any sponsorship opportunities from Seachem. 🤣 THANK YOU, for your unbiased review, for which you are known. Your contributions, for those of us in the hobby, are always greatly appreciated! 😊👍

I had an aquarium in the 60s, 1 teaspoon of plant food a month. My plants grew like crazy. I never did a water change. I couldn't believe all the fertilizer requirements for aquarium plants now. It was less complicated figuring out which fertilizer to use for 30 acres of corn.

Great video! I appreciate hearing what products you don't like and why. Then reading comments to see if anyone loves them and why. Gives me more info to base my decisions on. I've used Easy Green and Thrive and like them both. I am going to try Brightwell next though as my nitrates and phosphates always test higher than I want anyway.

Bentley your expression at the beginning of the video was priceless 😁 like you were really ready to just let us have it on what we need to know 🙌👍 I am a seriously poor aspiring fish keeper, I have to be very careful about not buying products that will just essentially be left in my cabinet, not worth the money or that just don't work. I have a list of KZfaqrs I can trust on the information they bring us and you are definitely in one of them! Thank you always for your honest reviews and topics you speak about!! I don't get to comment every time but I'm usually somewhere lurking 🤣 I hope you're having a blessed day my friend, thank you for sharing 🌿🐟🌿💚

I ditched the thing and shifted to an all in one fert. To be fair, when you follow the dosing, the plant growth is amazing, but it's so time consuming, they've designed it for those who have nothing else to do with their day but to aquascape.

THANK YOU! I ran out of Easy Green and since I was ordering something from Amazon anyway, I got some Seachem products. I was dosing with Flourish, Trace and Advance. Then I noticed my poor plants DYING. Now I know why...disposed of the Seachem stuff and ordered more Easy Green. There are only a couple of strands of pogostemon left and some time back I couldn't even see the rocks in my tank because they were so thick. My anubias are hanging in there but have some yellowing leaves and holes in the leaves. Even my 2 crypts have nearly disappeared...hope I can save them. I've learned SO MUCH from you the last several days, Bentley! You're awesome!

I was going to buy some of this in a few days, I'm very glad I saw this first and have now been introduced to the entire complicated line. Thanks heaps for sharing this, I will be looking into alternatives for sure!!! I'm very keen to try the Aquarium Co-Op one, hopefully they are able to offer shipping to Australia soon

Great breakdown of a HUGE problem with a popular product... keep educating the hobby 🥰

Thank you for posting this! When i got into planted tanks, I went down the Seachem rabbit hole. What a pain in the rear end.

A few years back I had a planted tank and I bought all of the seachem products and followed their dosing schedule. I had to post a number of messages on their forums to make sure I got the dosages right as it was difficult to figure out. The plants did really well but it was a major pain in the butt. when I set up my most recent tanks I decided to go with the aquarium co-op "Easy" products. They're so much easier and my plants seem to do just as well as with the seachem products. I still use seachem root tabs, and do have a bottle of potassium I dose in one tank because the Staurogyne Repens really seem to like it. I don't see myself ever going back to Seachem's full line tho.

Load and clear. I was considering Florish for my live plants. I’m using the Florish tabs in the substrate for now, until I run out. Glad that I watched this video first. I’m new, I hear the passion and I value your opinion. Thank you, Michael

Great video thank you bro, I just finished watching your 3 part series on the Fluval 3.0 light and that was great too, I went and bought one. Really loving your videos awesome content you’ve earned yourself a new subscriber.

Amazing review! Really brought light to this widely used brand. Could you also try reviewing the fluval fertilizer line?

Thanks for the education! I had purchased Flourish, had no idea I needed 7 other products along with it. Fortunately, I also have Aquarium Co-op’s Easy Green, which is what I’ll be using from now on. Have an awesome day!

Thank you. I’m an avid Gardner, but new to the planted tank world. Everyone recommends seachem products , but i have thought there must be a better way, and you just explained it. Excellent video.

Bentley, thank you for this video, and all the others I have and will watch, so much knowledge. I'm new to the hobby, my local national fish store advised that flourish was what I needed. SO I used it for several months, until I saw this video. Bought Aquarium co-op easy green, in the first week I can see the new growth. Please keep up the great work and education for all

We need more honest video like this to aid in those that are just getting into the hobby. I wish more on here would be this honest. It seems like too many people are worried about stepping on the toes of potential sponsors and that does not help those of us who are trying to figure this hobby out. Products like this (yes I bought advance) don't help keep people in the hobby.

I do still use the SeaChem root tabs, but am going to try some different brands when my current supply runs out. On liquids, I've moved on to the Aquarium Coop "Easy" products and I kind of like the NiLocG Macro/Micro combo. Still need to try Thrive on the liquid side. Good video.

Love this video! 100% agree. How is this product line still around? Not user friendly, not price competitive… Great video! Actually I bought Thrive last week for our store lineup.

So my wife and I have been watching Cory from ACO for a while, buy your the 1 that actually turned me onto easy green. You and Cory are the ones that turned me off of the Flourish line of crap. We were only using the Flourish, excel and iron. We didn't even know we should've been using others. So when our plants were dying every couple of weeks, we couldn't figure it out. We used their substrate and their fertilizers and our plants looked absolutely terrible after the first 6 months. We couldn't keep plants alive. Now after using easy green liquid and tabs, they are looking great! Our plants get huge very fast, to the point where we are setting up a 60 gallon, 30 gallon and a 90 gallon and won't have to buy a single plant for any of those tanks. The easy green line of plant fertilizers are fantastic! Thank you both so much! God bless

Good rant Bentley! Yeah, why do you want to make things more complicated? Just to make more money from people who doesnt know better? As a beginner I tried to figure out what this Seachem line was about and what I needed, but I kinda gave up. Seachem isn't easily available here in Denmark (no loss LOL), so I just use a local all in one brand that is more concentrated than Tropica Specialized. Works perfectly! 😄

LOL - the seachem line was so confusing and was the first type of fertilizer I used. It was supposed to be “easier than EI dosing” so that’s why I did it. And I definitely remember the HUGE (to me) COST, and then the math and calendar required to get it right. And I failed so hard. Had SO much gross algae and just… ugh. So far, my favorite is the NilocG. It’s the one that has the least weird side effects in my tanks. But also I haven’t dosed anything in quite a while since I haven’t had a “complicated tank” set up in a very long time. :) Also, gotta love a well informed Mr. Pascoe rant. Earn my upvote, sir! (The three thumbs downs I see must be SeaChem reps lmao)

What I like about you is your honesty. You aren't Mr. Downer bashing on things all the time. You will however speak your mind, and I appreciate that.

Took me a few days, but I'm glad I got time to watch this. LOL I tried to follow the seachem dosing schedule before finding your channel. It's dry only for me now, and mostly potassium and csm+b. And the cost to follow that dosing regimen on the tank behind you... Seachem trippin.

Love the rant Mr.Pascoe BUT... Flourish by itself has worked well for me in correcting deficiencies in the past so I still use it. Like you say, the aggressive sell-up is ridiculous, buyer beware! With my single 20gal well planted tank with a sub gavel filter and HOB the conversion is pretty straight forward. I decided on a dose of 1.6ml which I administer into the HOB outfall with an oral/topical syringe from the local drug store. The one I got for $4.00 is meant for use with infants. I dose twice per week. Very simple. I know managing an entire fish room is very different. glad for just the one tank to dial in and maintain for sure but I imagine that with even a half dozen tanks it would be simple enough to dose this way and I think Flourish alone is a help.No need for the whole 8 bottle regimine at all. nice chanel btw!

Way to go Bentley! It’s been Easy Green for me for sometime now.

Great video on seachem i purachased some myself and was bit of a head scratcher with all the different dosages. With the easy green Do you recomend using it by itself? Or is their other ferts that work well with easy green?.

Keep them video coming...I love the facts that you keep it real

Lovely to see this video just after I purchased a bottle of seachem flourish... 😂 Assumed it was a all-round fertilizer so was also confused when looking at the instructions. Might as well toss it now.

Ha! I thought something was wrong as well a year ago. I had my mathematician father help me calculate each element so that I could do twice per week EI dosage. After 2 years, I switched from Seachem to Tropica all in ones and now I just dose additional iron from a random iron fertilizer from my local fish store. Suddenly the plants are doing what I want them to do. Suddenly no algae, no brown slime, no plant hormones from Seachem Advance, and so on.

Can confirm, I used the recommended dose of flourish in a tank at work and had red algae two days later 😂 Glad to have guessed the topic haha!

Thank you so much for this video. I was about to spend all my money on the seachem flourish collection. Definitely getting that easy green. Ive done my research and its honestly the best option for me.

Thank you for this info! Just starting a planted aquarium and I couldn't figure out why some of my anubias are melting... well just flourish and excel isn't enough I see. These were recommended by another youtuber. I should have done more research. They don't say anywhere on the bottle about getting all these other elements and bottles! I now I have a bottle of thrive S (I have shrimp). I will be doing this or aquarium coop from now on.

Brilliant take down. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to know Seachem could easily dilute or strengthen a product to at least equalize the dosing amount across their product line....better yet, combine them into one.

Well said. Much awaited video

I like Seachem's root tabs... I have a bottle of Easy Green. However, my plants seen to grow pretty well without fertilizer. Maybe it's my water - 7.8 pH, 150-200 TDS. In any case, my water + fish waste seems to work pretty well.

Great video. I only buy excel for some algae control. It works when I pull out wood with hair algae and put drops on the algae and wait 15 minutes. I put it back in and it's dead in a couple days. Sometimes I'll use hydrogen peroxide, but my anubias are sensative.

Haha! No doubt. The only two products I use are Prime and the root tabs. I’m fully satisfied with Flourish root tabs.

That's craziness the way it's recommended! It does indeed sound like ei in liquid form, however I think most people don't need ALL those things depending on their water. Personally I've never used flourish, but I have used easy green as an all in one. My particular water is super high in minerals, and I found easy green at the recommended 1 pump per ten gallons was causing too much algae, especially elevated phosphates. I do still use it occasionally as a boost, but at half the recommended dose or less. I do like seachem trace quite a bit, because that coupled with potassium is all I really need, and since I switched to that I get great plant growth and less algae. I do need *a lot* of potassium, though.

Yaasssss!! I would never fertilize if I had to use Flourish. Great to see you speaking out about crazy expensive and crazy complicated it is. 👍❤👍

Hi Bently, I use Seachem and despite me liking the product, I agree with what you've said. It's complicated AF and ends up being very expensive. What do you recommend instead? Is it true that Easy Green by AC is too diluted and not concentrated enough to produce results? If so, what is your fertilizer of choice? thanks

Feeding the algorithm. Good work as always, keep it up.

Flourish excel is good for black beard algae. When I do a water change I have the filter off and put it directly on the BBA and it works. Didn’t notice much difference with flourish on the plants when I had it. 🤔

I'm so glad you exist this information has been so helpful 😸

Ten years ago there was a fashion to dose flourish trace with dry NPKs instead of using dry CSM +B. It wasn’t terribly expensive, but I never noticed a difference. The macros from seachem are a joke, though. I use either dry ferts or easy green.

Your list mentioned Equilibrium., too. What a lot of crap. I mean.... stuff! I did purchase potassium for my tank because my java fern was getting holes in it... that fixed it up. Otherwise, i use Easy Green and root tabs. Thank you for this video!

I have tried seachem flourish, the aqua products, and dustin's grow juice. For the price and results, I prefer the aquarium co-op easy products.

This was incredibly helpful!

Not a fan of Ranting Bentley, but great video! You successfully gave me the mind boggling feeling of using seachem florish products, so much so I can't even think to write a thoughtful response!!! 🤣 All kidding aside, I enjoyed the video but not as a steady video theme. One every now and then would be a nice change of pace tho.

I have gained so much respect for you in standing up for customer. I have also been a fool to use this stuff - no more. What pisses me off is that I am from South Africa and I pay around 9 to 10 times more here what you are paying in the US. Pity we can't get Co-op's products here. Congratulations in kicking their a***ses. I don't watch any videos promoting Seachem products. So by the way, their root tabs nearly wiped out my colony of shrimps. THANKS FOR OPENING MY EYES!

ROFLOL ~Wheeze~Snort~ROFLOL gasps for breath...you had me laughing very hard, over your rant. you are funny when you rant. Now to Seachem I agree with you, i bought some safe and something else I can't remember now, some ph balance stuff. Trying to figure out a dose for anything other than what they list on the back is a WTF moment. Trying to scale down the dose for a 20 and a 16 gal is next to impossible. I look like some sort of drug dealer with my gram scale out and all this white power and I am sure i am still doing it wrong. As to all the other stuff Seachem says you need, that is enough to make a new hobbyist run for the hills. Or worse yet, they get the doses wrong and ruin their tank, and lose all their fish. New Hobbyist's do not need this kind of confusion. Easygreen and root tabs were the first items I bought and used and I continue to use it as along as my nitrates are low enough for me to use it, other wise I use brightwell florinmulti (thank you bentley for that tip), so my plants get the other stuff they need without driving up the nitrates. Easy~simple and I don't have break out any gram scales. This is what new hobbyists need, simple, easy to use stuff so they can focus on keeping their water good and their fish healthy.

Omg I'm so happy you made this video..I was ready to give up p my new love hobby because I have well but I can't use tap it goes through a softner first..do I decided maybe it would be better to use my R.O water and remineralize..but I'm so confused.i do want to put live plants in..will easy green put minerals in n my r.o water to help fish as well ?

God you just saved me a bunch of time money and aggravation I sincerely appreciate this video and I will be moving over to easy green this week!

LOL! A righteous rant! BTW I know you are neutral on the other all in one brands but NilocG has formulas for high tech, low tech (Thrive C) and shrimp tanks (Thrive S) which is why I went with them. Pick the one for your style of tank and you are good to go. 😁

I love Seachem stuff prime/safe, purigen, tidal filter, and their meds. But their plant stuff is a big money grab. Easy green for me.

Thanks to you i wondered over to aquarium coop from seachem…i just hate that all these bottles and bottles ugggg ..keep up these videos i learn so much from you ….

Thanks for this rant. I find most people are over fertilizing and then they can't figure out why they have algae. That all said, I have good results with the NILOC-G Thrive line.

I agree, but I don't know why nitrogen is important. I have plenty. If there's one things not needed in any of my tanks it's more nitrogen.

Thank you so much for the advice.

Ha :) I have been waiting for you to post this video :)

Yes,yes,yes I couldn’t agree more. Please drag the soap box more often, that was great.

WOW ! Thanks for this! 1 month old tank. Only 2 bottles in. Chucking the Seachem and, looking into Easy Green!

I use all the seachem flourish lineup but don’t follow the chart and I have EXTREME plant growth ever since. For reference I was using niloc g before. I simply like to dose every nutrients separatly depending on the deficiency and just by eyes🤷🏻‍♂️

Great content, as always. Quick question: How do you feel about Flourish Excel? I use it daily for algae.

Subscribed after only seeing this video! Love you! 😂

You and Corey make me feel better about never succeeding with this stuff and spending way too much money on it before I got easy green. Happy supporter of Corey now, not so much seachem.

I just discovered tou tonight and I freaking love you!

Awesome rant Bentley! 👍 I was using Equilibrium to raise my GH but it only half dissolves in the water. I found a much cheaper alternative. Good by Seachem...😌

I use seachem liquid fertilizers, (specifically flourish, nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and excel) but I don't use them as they recommend. I have a low-tech 60 gallon planted aquarium, for example, and I'll check my nitrates and if they are very low I'll add some nitrogen for the plants. If my phosphates are too low I'll add seachem phosphorus. I don't have a way to check potassium, unless there are holes in some plant leaves, but I'll add potassium maybe once a week for the heck of it. I use the base flourish for all the non-NPK trace elements about twice per week and I'll add some Excel about twice per week too to help keep algae at a minimum. If I ever went to a high-tech tank then I'd switch to dry-powder fertilizers, but this is easy to get, use, and it lasts a long time. It's less concentrated than a lot of the other stuff, but that's good, because it stops me from over-dosing fertilizer and causing an algae bloom. But that's just my experience. Oh, I have RO water so I use seachem equilibrium to bring up my GH for the fish and plants (plants need calcium and magnesium) and I use seachem alkaline buffer to bring up alkalinity if it's too low. I don't use these things without first measuring, for example after a water change and then add the amount I need.

You held back! I thought that would have been much much worse @Bentley Pascoe

This is amazing! I just saw the chart today and was like WTF this is a joke. Easy green is what I am going to

I absolutely love flourish iron (Ferrous Gluconate)!! It acts as a carbon source and bacteria love it in addition to plants!

Agreed. Thanks f0r sharing! - Little Bobby

They should definitely use a standardized dosing concentration, even if they still use all the bottles, and should have a measurement device instead of “a capful”. I will still just stick with Easy Green

I just mixed up a half-liter bottle of fertilizer for my nine tanks using a few teaspoons of Mag Sulfate, a tablespoon of Potassium Nitrate, and a teaspoon of Potassium Phosphate in 500ml of RO water. Total cost to me, about 10 cents. Every time I visit a LFS and see bottles upon bottles of various fertilizers at €15 a pop, I groan internally...mostly what people are paying for is water and marketing. Yet my fishy friends all behave as though I am some master chemist because I'm able to avoid those armloads of expensive bottles and mix my own. The power of marketing has convinced everyone that there's something magic in those fancy bottles. I know better!

I checked on Amazon Canada because I shop there. The Seachem stuff all sells for $26 ish. Easy Green I pay $35 for. So if you needed to buy Seachem it would cost over $180 Canadian. My Aquarium shops are a long drive so more often than not I order online. Now last time I went to my local shop they sold me Prime, which seems to be a good product. Thanks for the review, I hope you had a stiff drink to settle your nerves.

BTW, what would you recommend to help promote root growth in the aquarium. I have been using a Seachem product and what was curious about alternatives.

Yeah... I started my first planted aquarium (a Fluval Flex 9G) about a year ago and got sucked into the Flourish line, my plants look great now that I'm using all of those products, but I made the mistake of thinking Flourish would be all I needed at the start. I'm using syringes to measure the doses. It's becoming tiresome. As soon as I run out of my supply, I am going to switch away.

when dosed as instructed, I had major algae problems with aquarium co-op line.

I was wearing a gas mask when handling flourish excel. All the recipes to use to kill BBA were causing my anubias roots to rot- even though BBA cleared up on the leaves on the anubias

Thank you for this video. The dosing chart is absolutely RIDICULOUS.

Wow just Wow, thanks for the honesty.

actually developped bba in my aquarium about a month after i started using flourish as a all in one... was really wondering what could have caused it and didnt suspect this stuff cause i tought it was a decent all in one. that stuff is going to be shelved for a while for sure and see how it goes

I did buy the trace and iron... Probably don't need in retrospect. Couple months ago I bought potassium phosphate, potassium sulfate, and magnesium sulfate to fill in the gaps. I tossed in some oyster shells to handle calcium and carbonate, along with other trace minerals. I guess I could toss in some cheap nails for my iron though. I just drop in a pinch every water change or every week or 2 if no need to water change. Never need nitrogen. I fact I've had to water change out my nitrogen regularly, though phosphate dosing helped this. I have easy green for my non dirted tanks.

I’m reminded of a time I used to work at a golf course- guys would show up- cigars, well dressed, expensive clubs, fancy expensive leather staff bags- but they suck at golf. Fish poop is my fertilizer & ya just supplement a little extra something- CO2, flourish- water change as needed- case closed. Guys go to the course telling themselves they’re out to have fun- but they’re really out for self punishment- and they know it. I’m no know it all, but keep it simple stupid- that’s my approach. It’s a hobby. It’s a garden. Pick something that doesn’t require a slide rule and you’re solid.

While I fully agree, I sadly cannot purchase much else locally. Maybe one day... This fertilizer regime is so blooming confusing, I ignore their schedule, I bastardized it started blending their own products together so I can dose 1 syringe myself daily. When I started, I made a chart for each tank.. it's truely maddening!

I'm just getting back into the hobby and found this video while trying to figure out the SeaChem's plant line. I think I'll just get some Easy Green, Easy Carbon and a few plants from Aquarium Coop instead. 1 pump of Easy Green and Easy Carbon every other day seems pretty simple.

I’ve been having staghorn and bba issues and I was hoping to email you until I saw this video 👀 I have a 40g medium planted tank. And I am always having algae issues no matter what I try. What I change. Or how I adjust my lights

Hello Bently. Completely agree with your opinions here! I have an off topic question if you dont mind. Why do you prefer heavy root feeder plants over stem plants that can clean up your water column ? Are there benefits of plants like vallisenaria or crypts over plants like pearl weed and rotala that take nutrients from the water column? Thank you!

I'm not into complicated fertilizing schedules so I just use a cheap fertilizer from a local brand that contains all trace elements and a potasium fertilizer(I usually don't need any added N or P). I don't like seachem liquid fertilizers but I use it's root tabs and I highly believe it's root tabs are great compared to a dozen other root tabs I've tried.

There was an ad for flourish after your video that said flourish was mentioned in you video! Guess they didn't watch your video.

I like to dose advance infrequently when I'm setting up a new tank to help jump start the growth. One day I'll switch to powders.

Does the brown bottle you showed that’s just literally drops because I only have nano tanks act as a deer corn eater as well? You had really good advice regarding Cart letter even though my previous correspondence with you was kind of “snippy”. Once again I sure hope I get a response. I was born in Seattle and spent time there but basically raised in California. I will definitely follow your channel regularly. How do you feel about dirted tanks? And Australia it cost $80 for a 9 litre bag of compact awkward soil but I really want to do a father Fisher method data tank so I’m really confused which one I should do because I’m only going to have nano fish. I want to say all my tax at the same. I have 3 seven gallon tanks plus one 13 gallon tank plus a little 3 gallon tank. Then finally I have a little 1 gallon tank and like I said I really want to set them up all the same way. The problem too with Compact Aqua soil or a send On top of Organic soil is it all gets finished so I think it’s the fish poop that feeds the live plants. I’ll take any advice I can get my fellow Seattle friend.

I agree. The only seachem product I purchase is Prime. It's been my go-to conditioner for decades. Do you prefer fritz over prime?

Fighting the Matrix! Good one Bentley 👍

Haha great video. What would you recommend as a 'proper' all in one fert? Something I can buy on Australia.

I just switched to their root tabs. I use tropica dosing once a week and flourish excel and the rest is down to fish waste. The plants do great

I made the mistake of buying the majority of the Seachem plant supplement line too. I've recently gotten back in the hobby after 10 years and back then Seachem was pretty much the unquestioned best thing you could buy. Edit: AquaVitro was basically Seachem in a fancier bottle for more $$.

Feeling really good about my purchase of easy green after seeing this.