Micros in non co2, deficient for floaters but toxic for rooted? super fine line with my dosing.

[vlad01]

Hi all,

The title isn't the whole question, it's far more complicated the issues I am having but I think I have a fair idea of the right path, hopefully, I guess that's why I am here to ask if my hypothesis is in the ball park.

So anyway, my setup currently is a non co2 temperate low light tank with two pretty large axolotls. The tank is 122 x 35.5 x 50ish cm, so a non standard 4' and a fraction of an inch size. Yeah, I had to custom order a custom made tank to replace this one soon as it is damaged, 4th or 20th owner, who knows, I'd say it's from the 90s

The substrate unfortunately is just quartz play sand from the hardware store (Bunnings for fellow Aussies), long story but FB groups steered me in all the wrong directions).

I have all the stuff to setup the replacement tank in the new year using the Barr non co2 method, but for now I am learning all the ways I can break stuff on this one.
The plants are mainly hygros, Polysperma, Corymbosa, a single sword, two anubias, recently added microsorum to a drift wood piece, and two normal pond lillies.

There is some small amount of java moss too, but nothing signifcant.

I have floaters, heaps of duckweed, fair amount of red root, and surprise water spangles, only just starting to spread.


So here in Aus, ferts are all crap, impossible to get anything good. So many months ago I went the macro way of dry salts from a chemical shop and was also lucky enough to be able to get KNO3 which was silently banded here for a good few decades but now relaxed laws allows you to gt basic chemicals again.

Macros are a non issue.

KH2PO4 every two weeks and maintain about 2ppm
CaCl and MgSO4 for the GH upon WC, sometimes a top up after several weeks, just drops maybe 1 GH over that time.
KNO3, barely ever use it, bio-load is more than high enough. Just sometimes after a WC to bring the NO3 back to range as it can take about two weeks for it to naturally go high enough.
K2SO4 for K, just once upon WC, never really moves for months

Water parameters are:

160L total
18.5c
Ph 6.5
GH 7-8 at Ca to Mg of 2.5:1
KH 1.5
K, 30ppm
NO3 25ppm
PO4 2ppm
TDS 250-300 ppm normally
Fe try to dose up to 0.1 0.2ppm total, split bi-weekly atm. Normally always detectable in Fe test. Used to go as high as 0.4ppm but micro mix nuked the plants.

Light, Beamswork Vivio, low light type of thing, full spec., 10 hours.

WC, only after 2-3 months when the tank is full of mulum.


Micros I tried many, seachem ones were so weak that literally no change, even at like 4x the dose. No change what so ever. Iron test always showed zero iron despite dosing saying otherwise.

Tried the Equilibrium, kinda worked but needed way more than the Barr method and ended up with too much everything else, but no OD symptoms, just went to deficiency if I stopped dosing as much or as often, never got the deficiency sorted like I wanted. I think that needs the the substrate outlined in the method for this to work well, inert sand doesn't cooperate.

Purchased AquaForest Micro, all suppliers in Aus were not able to get it and my one I purchased got lost in the mail. So I ended up being given a refund. Still can't get that.

After looking for something unrelated I found LCA micro mix from LCA in QLD Aus, and yeah that's when the problems started but at the same time also helped my floaters finally grow.
I was dosing to about 0.2ppm of Fe that the proxy said. Eventually I found out that the ratios are way off and they had something 4-6x the Mn and Zinc and Cu over the iron.

So I thought, ok, that was my prob.

The problem was all my hygros stopped growing, got symptoms of severe K difference, Mn/Mg/Fe like symptoms, N symptoms, and all the old leaves fell off over a few days, some of the new leaves and the middle ones seemed to be ok but a bit holey. Nothing wanted to grow.

However, the floated actually took off but the frog bit seemed to fuss. Less micros, they got square holes in them, more micros, they corrected but all the other plants below start dying.

The red roots also showed better color and growth with more micros.

Interestingly, my macros went up and Fe levels stopped going down, so the toxicity blocked all uptake it seemed.

LCA micro mix link here, and yeah, not good ratios and dose suggested a crazy high too. I dosed half the dosing from get go and half a frequent, and even reduced it more when this was happening.

Trace Mix Premium Dry

LCA Trace Mix Premium Dry mix of 6 micro nutrient EDTA chelates with Magnesium (Mg) as 100% soluble micro-granule. Provides the necessary micronutrients required for lush healthy growth. Add 450 milligrams into 100L tank twice per week with 30-50% weekly water change.*Note* Amounts above are for...

www.liverpoolcreekaquariums.com.au

So I bought some Rexolin, did a 90% WC, left it for 2 weeks and started again.

This time I dosed to 0.08ppm Fe, once a week. Or about 230mg per the 160L.

I also had Fe DPTA 7% and used that a little during this period, but went with the Rexolin for all in one given the ratios were pretty ideal based on scientific literature. My original plan was to dilute the LCA stuff with the Fe DPTA to get a better ideal ratio, but ended up finding Rexolin APN in Aus on ebay.

So the 1st week I got some improvement again, but by about week 4 it is evident that the toxicity is creeping back in.

But as soon as I reduce the micros, the floaters do bad, but too much I get some toxicity symptoms too. So it seems the line between toxic and not enough is small and happens quick in the floaters at least.

I know for sure the good large poly is def doing better with less, the holes stop appearing in the newer leaves at the lower dose and the colour seems ok, maybe slightly yellow in new growth, but does go green eventually as it gets older.

The cory was my best plant, it is now a mere fraction of the size it was, 90% lost and still looking sick.

The water spangles have gone to crap within a week and a half of reducing the micros, but the rooted plants are still showing signs of toxicity. The spangles show all new growth to have square patches in a grid pattern that are white and some are tuning into holes. Older leaves are ok and the original plant looks great except a new leaf is forming with the same white squares.

I had square holes often in the frogbit, but I removed them as they drowned all the other floaters which nearly lost all my red root. The duckweed still looks ok and grows like mad regardless, I scoop it out twice a week, but new ones always look slightly yellow until they age and finally turn green. Not even a pale green or white, but actual yellowy green. So Fe?

I went down to 70mg going by Barr's suggestion weekly or every 2nd , 35-70mg equiv of of the Equilibrium ignoring Fe, and just looking at Mn and others, So this is what I suspect, that the micro mix isn't enough for Fe, but too much of the other traces, at least in my tank.

So when I increase the Fe as all in one micros, it seems the iron levels satisfy the floaters and they seem to deal with or even like the high micros, but the Fe is adequate for the rooted ones at low dose, but the other traces are still toxic.

So I have started from the weekend to bi-weekly dose Fe DTPA at 0.08 x2 and will up the dosing based on testing, and I have stopped the Rexolin all together for at least a bit until the other traces deplete.


So I wonder if anyone else had an experience like this. I was able to replicate it at least twice or thrice in the main tank. I made a small scale bowl setup with the Barr onyx/leonardite base to experiment with, all from scratch, I got the wisteria which I no longer have in the main tank as it never grew at all after using ferts. This started to take off and I thought yes! finally I solved it, added Rexolin, 2mg to 1.7L, 1st time ok, 2nd time still ok but maybe the leaves stopped growing, 3rd week, the plants went to crap, roots and all stopped growing. I did a 80% change on the bowl, Fe and macros only and I see they are pearling again (stopped when I added the Rexolin 3rd time) and I see new root buds forming again, the new roots from 3 weeks ago all stopped and look like they are going to rot off.

So for sure the micros are toxic, but at a far lower dose that I ever thought or read. So my question is, for a low tech tank that is also kinda cold water. What is a good dosage guideline for micros ignoring Fe, as it seems Fe is needed in larger amount regardless in my testing.

I have always suspected it's Mn that is causing the majority of the issues as I have dosed inorganic micros many months ago as separate chemicals before I could find any chelated ones. And I never had issues with similar higher amounts of Zinc or Cu, I didn't have Boron as that is banned it seems, I had Mn, but as SO4, so I suspect it was quickly unavailable as was in the Equilibrium.

The best results I ever had when I was dosing 2-4x Flourish, plus 40ml of Seasol (seaweed extract food for gardens sold everywhere in Aus)

And I think that the Flourish's super low traces was enough and not toxic, but the iron that came from the Seasol (0.16ppm per week) was working. But seasol makes your water super dark and the axolotls seemed to freak a bit, so I went the dry chemical route.

So again, I am gathering that Fe needs to stay at the more typical levels, but all other traces need to be super low in non co2. I have read a few other threaded on the net that suggest a similar thing, micros become toxic easily , but iron dosed separately is still a requirement, one thread a person with co2 had all the same symptoms but it was a combo of too much micros and not enough PO4. So I guess the micros look again to be my problem.



I just stated this routine on this hypothesis and will see how it goes. If this is indeed the case, then why are the ideal ratios of micros and Fe which is a micro are so far off in reality compared to scientific literature, and secondly, if this is a common issue which it seems it is, then why do micro mixes use Fe as the dosing proxy when all the other traces are the ones to be careful of and doubly so when they are so toxic so easily, where iron isn't really unless at magnitudes higher than normal.


Thanks in advance for any advice or ideas.

 

[Tom Barr]

Micros are needed in CO2 enriched systems, they are needed at micro amounts.............in a non CO2 system, then this is reduced 10-20X at least.

That said, I've grown plants in CO2 enriched systems with ADA AS(you did not mention any sediment type), most other similar clay based soils should be relatively close long term for micros......for months, even over a year with no micro dosing. Plants do quite well without them. For a non CO2 tank, with 10-20x less demand....and a similar soil clay based product, I'd suggest the micros are entirely supplied via fish waste.

A decent fish live stock level would take care of most dosing and Nitrogen. A clay based soil would address the P and K, Ca, Mg etc along with tap water for top offs for evaporation.

Point is, you really do not need much ferts. If your livestock is adding enough N, over feed them a bit. Plants will eat the leftovers.
The other good option: add more shrimps and SAE's the silver one without stripes are the best I've found. Basically increase your algae eaters.
Add a Bushy nose pleco. Cherry shrimp, CRS etc. Better them, than you.

Goes along with the whole concept of balanced and natural approach/philosophies that many seek for non CO2.
It's also really easy.

Australia has a lot of import issues. Might ask Paul Byham, owner of Reservoir Aquatics, a tissue culture lab in Melbourne Australia. He's been doing ferts and plants for a good 2-3 decades.

 

[vlad01]

Hi Tom, Awesome to be able to speak to the man himself. I have read a lot of your work from long ago.

I was using the 5-10x less rule mentioned in some old posts from a decade ago I would say. But interestingly, I guesstimated an approx rate of 15x less using the only macro that I know is consumed and I actually dose, that is P. That is at a rate of 1ppm per fortnight. Of course that is not in isolation due to the bio-load, so it could be that 20x less. But I wasn't sure if I'd stick to the 5-10x less or go with my observation, clearly my gut was right if that's what you recommend.

I agree, I have not needed to dose any N at all, other than just making the water the same level as it was prior to a WC when the clean/maintenance is in need. My N usually is steady if everything is good and doesn't move up or down for several weeks, when it does, usually a spike up if when I have done something wrong like this and the plants stop functioning.

My bio load are two large axolotls, purchased this month last year as juveniles, now at a whopping 25cm and fat bellies. I do not have any other live animals in there, other than micro ones like the usual detrius worms, water mites, springtail things, however two small rams horn snails hitched in from somewhere. I don't have any algae issue thanks to the no/rare WC routine, just tiny bits of GSA and diatoms which have been the same for months even without cleaning.

I am pretty sure I mentioned the substrate, I assume by sediment, you mean the substrate? But maybe you missed it as my post is not that well structured, writing isn't my strong suite.

The substrate is a fine silty inert quartz sand, sold as play sand here. The SDS for it said it's pure-ish quartz river sand, safe for human use and also even mentioned suitable for aquariums and non leaching. There is nothing else mixed with this sand. About 2.5-3" deep it is.
It buffered KH and GH a little while for the first few months, but is totally inert now, that was probably from trace mud/sandstone contamination I could see when I examined it closely, the entire continent is just about made from those two.

I have purchased and put aside both Seachem Onyx sand and US imported leonardite (I have all the leonardite there was remaining in Aus in my garage, got extremely lucky) to redo the setup when our new house is ready, I have not used it yet.

Does this combo from your old non co2 method articles still stand? Or should I use something else for the substrate. It is no issue for me to purchase something else if you think there is a better substrate for the non co2 method. I can easily sell what I have as there is high demand for aquarium supplies due to the import issues you mentioned.

I can get flourite sand instead, I prefer something finer due to the axolotls being like toddlers if you know what I mean, I have considered swapping the onyx sand due to the very high ph I get in my small test bowl. (ph 9-10). Not sure if the Ph will ever settle lower, perhaps you can tell me if this is expected or not.

I had a guy buy my old 2 foot starter tank last month, and we had a long chat about the hobby, he swears by ADA aqua soil capped with some sand, in non co2 and co2 tanks he has several and had been in the hobby for over a decade, with excellent results. No micros dosed either, just macros.


As for the micros, assuming the sand I have contains nothing which it should, also despite being 12 months old already, under the first 5-10mm, the sand still looks brand new so no mulum or organic matter as far as I can see has been able to penetrate the silt like nature of it, so I have doubts that anything useful has been able to make it's way in. Also seems to be evident by the fact the sword and lily does not grow at all, until I add root tabs, as soon as I push one or two in under the root area, they both start to grow, and the sword is currently growing new leaves extremely fast. One to two large leaves per week and they are massive leaves too compared to the previous ones. I made my own tabs for them.
Bit of a ramble, but what I was getting to, assume no micros/macros from this sand, what would be this 20x less be in actual dosing?

Say I still keep using the Rexolin, 20x less Rexolin vs the average total weekly for EI for 160L comes out at about the 70mg weekly I first came up with using a different reference of your non co2 EQ dosing and using the Mn level, ignoring the Fe. I still have issues at 70mg, so I think it needs less but not sure what is ballpark dosing is. I was thinking of trying 25mg weekly. That is about 10x less than what I was using at the start which was still about 5x less than EI from memory.

Thanks, Vlad.

 

[vlad01]

Bit of an update.

I have not dosed any micros (Rexolin APN) at all except just plain iron in the form of 7% Fe DTPA twice weekly in response to how the duckweed is going as well as testing, I am finding 0.08-0.1 twice weekly seems ideal for my tank, at the end of the 3-4 days the iron test shows it is being consumed pretty much to nothing. When an OD of the other micros in the past, Fe is not taken up at all and just sits at the same level until a WC is performed, so I know for sure this is uptake, not just precipitation. My Ph is about 6.2-6.3 so the chelate is pretty stable I found with previous use.

Anyway, I am finding the same thing as questioned in the title of this thread, the planted plants have improved and no longer drop leaves and get holes in new growth but they still aren't growing except the poly on the right side that is very tall, so I think there is a light issue as well which I suspected as the floaters took over the surface, I will be fixing that soonish, however, the water spangles and red roots had shown stability for about 1 or so weeks post stopping micros, then as the new growth has progressed, they are becoming more and more mottled with white patches, holey, white and pink/red and green veins with white surroundings. This is something I have repeated many times, more micros to a point fixes that.

So it seems these floaters for sure want higher micros and suffer without regular dosing, but bellow plants suffer when dosing micros. So I am going to try reinstate the micros but at the 20-25mg weekly as a guess as the 70mg based on the 20x less than EI was showing evidence of being too much for the planted plants, seemed ok for the floaters, so I am hoping this is a happy middle ground.

Interestingly, the large bucket outside has my drift wood soaking and the floaters that ended up in there are doing well, frogbit which always struggled in my tank.

For experimentation, I only added some Fe and KHPO4 and they look good after a week, no holes, large and green and very nice roots. But that bucket was filled with tap water, where my tank uses rain water so I can be sure of the Mg/Ca dosing when I mineralize it.

The tap water is devoid of most things, 0 P, 0 Fe, 0 K, 0 N, and KH of 4, GH of 6 with unknown Mg/Ca. But I suspect it has some micros in there, but no way of knowing what. I thought it was interesting as most of the plants did ok with it.

 

[vlad01]

Another update, lean on the micros have now resulted in broad deficiency symptoms across all plants, even the duckweed.

Not sure why there seems to be no window of ideal dosage for the Rexolin, any sufficient dosing results in death of plants eventually, low or no dosing results in a similar issue but mostly in new growth and no root formation.

The only time I had decent health for all plants was a combo of Flourish and Seasol (seaweed extract), so I suspect the Flourish was an ok micro fert and the Seasol was a good iron source since it's micros are so low that even a huge dose is far far less than anything meant for Aquariums, so I doubt the Seasol did much for micros other than iron, calc and mag.

So I am ditching the Rexolin for now and giving the Flourish another shot but this time with the the 7% Fe DPTA which I am still dosing more or less the same for a few months now.

My original Flourish dosing when combined with the Seasol was about 2x the upper dosing suggestion on the bottle since Flourish is super weak. It may have been a bit higher, I think I recall 20mL per week. I am dosing 7mL biweekly for a total of 14mL to start and will see what happens. Nothing much yet except the water spangles have seen some quick improvement, they almost died after reducing the micros to the 25 or so mg of Rexolin. They def see good improvement when dosing micros.

I never had issues with the planted plants with even 20mL of Flourish weekly, they actually did best as mentioned, but only with the seasol. So I hope the iron chelate I add + flourish works.

It seems the stem plants hate the Rexolin no matter what, but the floaters do well for the most part and even depend on it. So I suspect the Rexolin I have might have something wrong with it? I have heard anecdotal reports of the same results from a few other people that had issues with Rexolin from one source, but not another. I just got it from ebay as most of this stuff can't be purchased anywhere else in Aus except on ebay, I have no way of testing anything like this, so it's all speculation at this point. Maybe my plants don't like chelated micros other than the iron and prefer them as salts? Not sure what the issue is, but it all went pear shaped after starting to use chelated forms of micros because I had issues with available iron in them, but now that I dose iron separate, hopefully switching back to the other micros as salts might return my plants back to their previous health.


Also, in my test bowl, I have not dosed any micros for many weeks now and at the same time as the main tank that had a very reduced dose, both had the same death of new leaves and dropped roots within the same week. So that seems like both are indeed a deficiency now. I started adding 2 drops of flourish biweekly and the new growth and roots have come back, though the stem plants are still stunted as of now but showing signs of new buds forming.


I will continue with this and report back how things go. If there are little to no response, I will up the Flourish as I know that I was putting copious amounts in earlier in the year and only got positive results from doing so.

 

[vlad01]

So I reckon I have figured out the problem. It's the Rexolin, or at least possibly the source of the Rexolin. Not sure what is wrong with it, it's basically toxic at all doses at a dose dependent manner where the floaters can tolerate it more than most other plants I have.

I heard one anecdotal report of a person having the same issue with Rexolin, and then sourced it from another supplier, claimed he took 2 years to figure it out but was adamant that is what the casue was, same sort of toxicity symptoms too, it was in a high tech tank though, which I would imagine would have a much larger margin for error than a low tech.

Anyway, I am still dosing the Flourish (regular one with just traces mainly) and I upped the dosing to 10mL twice weekly, so the other micros except iron were actually a bit higher than what I was doing with the Rexolin and the difference is remarkable!

The already sick hygros on the left side of the tank are not getting any worse except when I hit a hard deficiency due to the sustained low dosing over many weeks in order to figure all this out.

So I am still waiting on a response from the sick hygos on the left of the tank, the right side is doing well with no more holes appearing, there was a bit of a yellowing/slowdown in new growth during the deficient period but now is responding to the new/old regiment.

See the pics, close examination of the red root shows toxic effects on the very oldest leaves, medium age leaves from about 3 weeks ago are the deficient ones, buckled, pale and veined and smaller, the new ones are mere days to no more than a week old and they look heaps better! not all of the plants have responded yet, many have poor roots so their uptake seems to vary a lot from individual to individual.

The water spangles have exploded into growth, the older leaves even exploded into much larger sizes in just 2-3 days, but since all the damage seen here is from deficiency (never got toxicity on them, instead they are very prone to deficiency I found) and newer leaves are growing large and fast and decently healthy. I am using them to gauge the micros as they show it very clearly.


Lastly, you can see new duckweed leaves that are darker and 2-3 times the size of the old ones. The duckweed is looking great for all the new growth and the rate of surface cover is 2x the speed at least, even during the use of Rexolin, so that tells me that even though the floaters grew ok for the most part on that, the toxic effects still hindered their potential.

I'll keep this regime and post in a few weeks what I find.

One last thing is, my iron consumption has more than doubled since switching back to Flourish, that is the dosage of the 7% DTPA, I am now finding that I add about ~460mg twice a week + the 0.2ppm the flourish is adding, I was only dosing 230mg or so of just the 7%, and a negligible amount from the Rexolin, no other iron was needed as the end of the 3-4 days before dosing again, I found that there was some that registered on the test, like 0.02-0.05. Now after the same 3-4 days, it sometimes comes up as zero or similar to previously, where before when I used to dose higher amounts it would accumulate over a week which meant that the dosing was more than the uptake. So I infer this as a toxic effect of the Rexolin I was using was in turn inhibiting uptake of other nutrients including the iron. I have see this effect with the LCA micro mix too, the iron stopped being taken up altogether and was stuck at the same level for a few weeks without dosing anymore before I declared a WC was needed to reset.

So at the end of the day I almost had the dosing figured out many months ago but instead of just adding some Fe DTPA in place of the Seasol, I made the mistake of switching everything except macros to a dry chelate and caused havoc with all this running around in circles trying to figure out what was wrong and regression in progress.

I had already pretty much nailed the Flourish dosing back then too, it was just the iron that was lacking and I was on the right track, the whole entice of all in one micro bulk powder got the better of me. The things you learn from your mistakes!

 

[vlad01]

Changed the routine a bit. So in the end I found that 13ml of flourish every 3 days and iron to about 0.3-0.4 combined for those every 3 days worked pretty well, not quite but like 90% there.

But I was running out of flourish pretty quickly, I ended up ordering online via ebay from a aquarium supply store that runs exclusively through ebay. I found that they now stock flourish Trace, I have been trying to find a micro fert that included some nickel for almost a year, but just can't find them in Aus, just so all bases are covered I wanted nickel as well. It's pretty evident that my tank chews through micros very fast, so although nickel is an ultra low trace, there is a chance it may deplete given the other micros deplete within days, no water changes, and totally inert quartz sand.

I went by instructions and alternate every two days of the trace and regular, but I dropped the regular flourish to about 4-5ml closer to the instuction to see if more regular but similar combined dosing of Mn and B as ref would improve. Well I saw a boost initially but slowly the same deficiency has crept in, nowhere near as quick or as bad say as using 7ml of flourish alone previously, but similar to 10ml, where 13ml was good.

So I am keeping the same 11ml of trace as per instructions and upping the flourish from the 4-5 to 7ml. So the overall dosing will be higher than the 13ml alone, but less in one hit, so my idea is to allow higher overall without the risk of OD during the actual day of the dose.


So it seems that my tank likes more micros than what a low tech typically would? Def in the upper range for sure, I thought maybe because the sand is inert and has no EC, but a curiosity on the co2 levels discussed in another thread had me look into a rough test using the KH/ph look up table and then aerating the sample to degas it as a reference.

I got a surprising result.

KH is about 2.5-2.8, best I can estimate via drop test and looking how much to dilute back to reversing the colour change. Basically 3KH on just the pure drop testing as per intended.

Morning before light, ph 6.5.
Evening as the ramp down starts, ph 6.8
Aerated to degas, ph 7.6-7.8 (test is maxed out, so colours aren't super accurate)

But the degased result lines up with the expected 1-3 ppm for the KH measured.

So assuming some approximation and obvious error, the co2 seems to be around 25-28ppm in the morning and drops to about 12-15ppm by the end of the light period.

That seems very high for a low tech, is this even possible? I have a heap of peat moss in my canister and I have not changed it in many months, there is no longer any tannins in the water. The peat would be almost soil at this point. The canister would be full of muck, but the tank seems to love no attention. If it ain't broke, don't fix approach.

I know that bacterial action of decaying organic matter is one of the major sources of co2 in a natural river system for example, but this seems overly high for the natural amount.

However, some of the plants in the tank are growing abnormally fast for a low tech now that I have the micros dosed enough and I also had to increase my lighting almost double to get light penetration due to the overgrowth of some plants. The floaters are growing so fast, that I remove about 2cm worth in a takeaway container every two days, or the entire surface of the tank worth in about 5-7 days. I know that has nothing to do with co2, but it certainly has made it a challenge to get adequate and consistent lighting due to the rapid growth.

The lighting is causing issues with the poly, the bottom leaves die off I am sure to lack of light, they look very poorly lit there, the top and mid leaves are healthy and huge!, roots are enormous and spreading fast. So the well lit areas are growing great! My light is now at like 96% DC, I originally had them at 43-48% DC for a long time. I also added aux lights on the sides, red/blue ones and have them at near 50% now. I started at 18% recently. They help with the light penetration and compensate that part of the spectrum being absorbed out by the floaters. So I have a better white balance at the substrate than the predominately green light I had before without the aux lights. So the lighting is well over 2x that I stated with 6+ months ago.

The sword is growing a new leaf every 2-4 days, and they reach a length of about 45cm as an estimate within a week and a bit, runners have new plants as big as the common size they are sold as within a few weeks.

Lava is also growing large and fat leaves and at a fast pace for what is a slow plant, the anubias are the same with the large variety I have is now popping up new rhizome buds in several places simultaneously. Leaves also, full sized but short stems for some reason, not sure why the short stems, could be the lighting? very dark in that area. The nana is the opposite, very large and tall leaves with a new one every 2 weeks. It's growing awesome!

I didn't think a low tech can grow out so fast and large for many of the plants I have. Not all are doing well, those seem to be micro limited I am finding, but I hope that a good aqua soil and some capping with EC will help when I redo the replacement tank, def not complaining though! I wonder if the crude co2 measurement might actually be ball park correct and be partly why the plants are doing well with high dosing of micros and higher than typical lighting requirements?

 

[vlad01]

So things had a sudden turn and went to crap, and now I am 80-90% sure of the culprit trace element that likely was casuing all my issues.

I have pretty good indirect evidence, but a controlled experiment would need to happen to confirm this 100%.

I belive the toxiciy all along was zinc.


Changing up my routine to include Trace as the main micro fert and normal Flourish as the add on as per their instuctions turned out that what I thought was a deficency unpon the change up to include Trace allowed me to nail it down to zinc, with some posibility of copper, but the later I doubt which I'll get to in a bit.


So here is the all the previous micro ferts which all resulted in negatives and zero positive results, regardless of dose.

First is LCA, very popular in Aus as there are very little micro only ferts sold here, especially dry. Note the grotesque glut of zinc, the dosing instructions are also extremely high in my opinion, I dosed a fraction of this and used the iron as proxy to monitor the overall inferred trace amounts in the water. Iron proxy showed no uptake and death of plants. The Fe as a proxy proves an excellent tool going forward.




Next I used Rexolin, although not super high on zinc, it is elevated compared to the other elements by what I estimate by 50% over the theoretical idea ratios.



These last two which I currently use are regular Flourish which worked great once I dosed enough, then Trace added with Flourish reduced so the combined dosing of the majority elements remain similar with the addition of Nickel.

First one is Trace and the last is regular Flourish.

Even though I thought that the zinc and copper were still in the very low levels in absolute dosing, it's 24 and 32x respectively the amount in flourish. This seems to be where my issues in toxicity lays.






Going back to the copper, I know copper can easily be toxic, but I have not seen any issues with the snails in the tank.

Furthermore, in my current quarantine bucket in the garage, I have in there water lettuce, crypts, ozelot and some more hygro polysperma, That bucket I have deliberately doses copper to around 0.5ppm to nuke any unwanted snails. We have some bladder look alikes here in Aus that are nasty and prefer plants above all and will generally eat everything. I don't know what species they are, but they suck! I had them in my tank as a pest back in 1999-2004 and I couldn't even get rid of them with boiling water and starting over.

So my plants have been in the bucket for nearly 2 weeks, some only one week today, the snails I did see died within 24 hours, so I know the copper is at a very toxic level.

As for the plants, I have seen no ill effects, even the crypts which I heard are known to eaily shock and melt look totally fine. Hygros usually always melt for me when the temp difference is too much, they are completely fine too. Water lettuce is actually growing pretty good despite the toxic copper.

So I am fairly sure it's been the zinc. I originally thought maybe the Boron, but I have ruled that out as these toxic effects happen very quickly but never align with Boron quantities dosed. However, as you can see, zinc seems to look like the culprit as my worst effects have been with all of the ferts that contain a lot of it, and it's now apparent that the threshold for this alleged zinc poisoning is very low, and would then explain why the chelated forms and especially the LCA micro mix was so bad.

So the iron has been a real help in this endevor, I found it makes a decent proxy but even in isolation it shows uptake issues like a red thumb.

When all is good and growth, defficency/toxicty issues are at bay, iron is taken up very fast, my plants soak it up like a sponge.

Over several times, when a toxicity occours, iron uptake abrupty stops and levels skyrocket very fast.

It was today that my iron was suddenly at 0.8ppm, if I dose say to 0.4, by 2-3 days it's almost zero, normally around 0.05 or just under, I dose iron a lot and offten and it's take up fast unless there is a deficiency which slows it up a bit, but with toxicity, it just abrupt stops the uptake.


So now I know, that trace results in toxicity, at the normal dosing, where as flourish does not at all and even requires a high does with very positive results.


The two that stand out is Zn and Cu, but Cu in other situation haven't resulted in the obvious nuking of the plants.



So this prompts me to take the opportunity to rearrange the tank, add the new plants and do a large WC and go back to the previous routine of just Flourish at the 13 or so ml per 3 days which worked pretty good.

From there on I can play with the dosing amount and interval to try to get those stubborn hygros to come good.


I honestly can't wait to move house and redo the whole tank with aquasoil as dosing the water column is a pain the least to say and I hope the soil really helps stabilise things and alleviate the need for such controlled and frequent dosing. My tank is basically inert, so it relies a lot on the water column.


My final thought is, why do most ferts add so much Zn and Cu? especially the Zn?

I found this to be the case with every commercial fert even outside of aquariums.

 

[Allwissend]

It's an interesting list of fertilizers. Difficult to say what did what as the tank and plant just 'accumulate' their own history despite large water changes. In my view, other than being the most abundant micronutrient, iron is a pretty bad proxy for the other micronutrients. More so when you dose iron with a very week chelation such as that from Flourish. Iron readily oxidizes at common pH levels compared to say copper ... so while you measure low iron due to high oxidizing conditions, there could still be plenty of the other micronutrients. For example, as you mention, plants doing great and an associated drop in iron levels; it could be that the photosynthesis causes and increase in pH and oxidative conditions, thus actually increasing iron loss through precipitation, not uptake.

Glad you found a fertilizer that suits your tank's needs. Estimating the water concentration based on measured dosing and water changes will help you figure out a routine that works. Keep us updated.

 

[vlad01]

Yeah maybe I wasn't completely clear on the iron side of things, I dose DTPA Fe on top of the Flourish, I agree, the Fe in Flourish doesn't hang around for long at all, but the DTPA on the other hand in my own personal experience, remains in the water for a long time. One of my outdoor buckets I found that the Fe tested was near the amount I dosed some 3 weeks earlier, and so I don't dose it. I haven't for probably 2 months now. It has been more than adequate so I haven't dosed anymore.

As for the tank, I found high correlation between Fe depletion or accumulation for good healthy growth and no growth/death respectively, So much so, that I can go from dosing 0.4ppm every few days and find near zero upon the next dosing when the growth was at it's best, but then I find that I can have no take up and within a few days iron is well in the OD territory. This happens every time I have OD'd on something, but when deficient, I find Fe uptake to slow down more linear with deficiency but nowhere near those extremes as an OD.

Fe uptake stops basically dead when I OD in another "unknown" micro.

P and N also start to rise, but it happens more slowly as we are measuring much higher ppm range, so the change is harder to notice, but with Fe, it's been an awesome tool in seeing an OD event, where as observing the plants only it's hard to tell what the symptoms are telling you.

But yeah, the hygros have mostly gone to crap and very quickly, and only after starting on the trace.

When I sum up the total of each element from my original high dose of Flourish only with the combined Trace primary, Flourish secondary supplement.

Most of the elements were the same within a few %, Boron which is know to cause toxic effects easily was actually far less, (my initial thought was I wasn't dosing enough because of this lower B)

Manganese was slightly higher, something like 10% iirc, so nothing out of the ordinary. I have dosed Mn separate in the past in much higher doses and only encountered positive effects. As high as 0.2ppm I am far far below this. In fact this is most likely the main deficency I have in my floaters when I don't dose enough.


Then when I get to Cu and Zn, this combo of Trace and Flourish equal many times more than using the high doses of Flourish alone.

As because I have used Cu a few times to treat for snails in buckets with new plants in them, and only seen no to mild effects, I am pretty sure that the culprit is Zn.


The LCA one is a good example, the Fe when I stated using it, never went down, it only accumulated, right from the first dose. Plants stunted, grew shorter, all but the newest leaves dropped, stems rotted, plants snapped, roots dropped, buds fell off, pin holes etc... All this within a week, leaves actually dropped in 2-3 days. Where the other micro ferts down my list, they would work ok intitally, but after a week, two to three, the iron suddenly shoots up and plants become sick and the above happens.

The LCA was so bad it actually started effecting my anubias, yellowing of older leaves and pinhole, no growth. The anubias have such a high threashold that they rarely are effected by OD, same as the Java. So given it has extreme levels of Zn it lines up with my speculation.


I had been using the Flourish alone for several weeks and slowly upping the dose , then lowering it and back up so I could confirm what I was seening was indeed deficency and not toxicity. I was confident without a doubt that the dosing was correct and showing that is was indeed deficency and not a toxic effect.

So that made me originally think that the previous ferts were somehow toxic because they were chelated? Or maybe they were contamianted with some other heavy metal?

But adding the Trace finally gave me the "ah ha!" moment when I ran over all the elements and saw that Zn and Cu were 10s of times higher than Flourish alone.


I have stopped Trace, and now while I wait for my quaratine to finish, I thought, well it's all pretty buggered, I also ran out of my Fe test so I can't afford to do larger Flourish does every 3 days like previously, so I calulated that a daily 4.3ish mL dose should be equiv to that and just trickle a constant flux and not give a big hit at once.

And I am starting to see the floaters recover some, but everything still looks sad, the WC and clean is needed, but any wasted time wating is a good time to squeeze in some science!


I am considering an auto doser so that something like this can be more automated and take out the error of me forgetting which day I'm suppose to dose, the times, exact amount etc...


Man it would be so good if there were cheap handheld spectral analizers for water testing that could tell you all the elements and amounts. One day I hope! It would make dianostics and plant care so much easier and not months of trial and error with some assumptions and guesses all mixed in.

I feel like I have had all the hardest issues to workout in my tank than anyone I know, all fringe and curly issues that there is basically zero or extremely hidden info on the net for.

Makes it interesting, but also frustrating too.

 

[vlad01]

I thought I'd also post this chart up on typical element concentrations for aquatic plants.

I use this just as a sanity check and rough guide. I don't take it as gospel but very handy for figuring out starting points and issues.



When I align Trace over using Mn, most of it lines up pretty close, then the Zn end up 5x and the Cu 3x these values in the chart.

Flourish ends up being bit more on the B when centered on Mn as the common reference, and quite a lot below on the Zn and Cu, so I think this adds more weight on the Zn OD and possible Cu, but like I said, the snails in the tank are totally fine with even this amount of Cu being dosed, but I won't dismiss it entirely as a contributor.

I am now very confident it's Zn as the major culprit.

 

[vlad01]

Things are doing good again after the large WC and rearrangement and some sand vacuuming in the area I feel previous bad tabs had caused issues. And yes it was putrid and root were all dead and rotten in that area.

I have switched up dosing a little, so back to Flourish only, but I am trying daily of initially 4.3mL daily which is around that 13mL per 3 days.

Unfortunately my iron kit ran out so I staved odd iron dosing until I had a new kit as I had changed the Flourish dosing regiment. But by the way plants were looking, I was thinking it was low.

Test confirmed I had basically zero iron even with daily dosing, so consumption seemed to have returned back to normal. I gave it a good dose of the DTPA yesterday and will check in 3 days from then and reassess.


The floaters were looking deficient. So I slowly upped to 5mL daily, still didn't fix the mottled pale look, I am sure that is Mn as the main symptom, growth was good elsewhere though.

I mixed up a Mn solution to supplement the Flourish. Flourish is rather high on B when you compare it to Mn, or low on Mn vs B, so I made a solution that I does a mirror amount in mL to the Flourish, so 5mL of Flourish and 5mL of Mn solution, 4mL and 4mL, and so forth.

This solution changes the ratios from about 4:5 of B:Mn to 2:5 like in that chart I posted, so to keep the Flourish the same and boost the Mn a little. There was some improvement, floaters are growing faster and look slightly better, but still not quite there. So I have from today upped to 6mL of each per days. I am very close as the spangles if that's what they are are doing very well and nearly show no deficiency, only slightly on the older leaves as they age due to nutrient re-absorption for the new growth.

Some small bits of frog bit have grown for the first time in months, and still shown some Mn deficiency holes. But they are growing instead of just being the same tiny half dead bits for months. They served as a proxy for when things are right, they have always been the most fussy for me, especially for Mn levels. So I am on the right track.

I really need an auto doser haha.

I also bought a Mg and CO2 test kit as was always wondering what my levels of both are in my tank and source water.

I was genuinely surprised, with the Mg at least.

Tap water is around 6-8 ppm of Mg, GH is around 5-6, normally 5.5ish. So now my water authority reports finally make sense as they test the "carbonate hardness" as the GH and KH as alkalinity. So the carbonate hardness is stated in mg/L of CaCO3 and normally around 50-70 ppm, so when you run the 17.9ppm per dGH, you get that 3.5 ish GH for the test report value, Then when you plug in the GH for the magnesium I tested, it adds up to the 5-6 GH using the drop kit.

The annual water quality report states partially all trace elements except for Mg frustratingly enough. The annual state wide report uses Ca as in CaCO3 as the value, but the local authority calls it carbonate hardness which we refer to KH, but you know they are calling it wrong as the formula in brackets says CaCO3.

So it turns out we have magic water that has pretty damn good Mg and Ca levels right out of the tap.

I tested my tank, I always dosed a min of 5 ppm of Mg based on the assumption of either nothing, or if there is some I don't OD on it. When tested, it was over 10 but not by a lot going by the colour, test maxes at 10ppm.

Most of my fancy kits are JBL.

Lastly, CO2. Not sure how accurate. But I repeated it a few times, it says somewhere around 22-24ppm. Before I did my WC, the KH/Ph lookup said similar, but after the WC as my KH went up, it says around 15 ppm, so a fair sized discrepancy, but still both show I have co2 far higher than I imagined.

I have not cleaned my canister in several months and I filled one level with peat moss. So maybe this bacterial generated CO2?

Tap water comes out at 14ppm, but the lookup table method says its around 3-4 ppm. So not sure?

The CO2 is just a curiosity more than anything but something I have thought about due to the great growth I get in this tank despite being moderately heavy on plants and seems to behave favorable to more ferts and light than what I've read about non co2 methods would say otherwise.

So here are some updated pics.

New to crypts too, neither melted which is awesome! new leaves on the smaller one already, hard to tell with the bigger one since it's so dense and busy looking.





Newly added water lettuce has bounced back from the copper treatment, even the old leaves have gone from white/yellow to a nice green! And in the last week it has suddenly stated to grow quite quickly.

You can see the red root still look very orange/pink with mottled look, but they are improving as I slowly up the daily dosing of Flourish and now Mn.




Corymbosa recovering from the brink of death.




Trimmed and replanted poly I think?

Tuesday and then today Friday, so 3 days and some speedy growth.

I figured a lot of the pinhole issues is lighting, I am always fighting to clear an area for them through the floaters, the floaters gather at that end due to the water current.

You can actually see the lighting difference in that 3 days, I cleared more today than 2 days ago.

The new ones I added on the left side of the tank (in the pics above) have had no such issues, and due to the way the floaters move, they actually have full light all of the time and are doing well, no pinholes on any of them. I never had any holes on any of the upper high light areas on this lot that is often shaded. So I am 90% sure they have a min light requirement, even in low tech tanks. When I had the Beamwork marine EA light, none of the hygros had holes, even when the leaves were aweful looking due to being new to the game and not dosing anything at all. They light a lot of light, but I am limted with this Beamswork Vivo due to lack of afforable options in Aus. You might noticed the DYI red/blue lights, they cost me about 25-30 AUD a pop to make and have boosted the much needed R/B end lost due to having so much plants up top. But they are on the weak side of lumins, better than nothing and they have certainly helped.





Really loving this, so much enjoyment in watching the ecosystem evolve and learning by problem solving.
The micros elements have been one of the hardness aspects to learn and figure out.

 

[vlad01]

So interestingly, slowly upping both Flourish and additional Mn resulted in sudden issues with the floaters and the older hygros rapidly developed pin holes, even in the new growth. No other major issues, leaves are still all attached. Maybe a slight slowing of growth in the hygros and floaters.
It appears Mn is the cause of the pinhole issue, either via too much or an accumulation over time.

Zinc appears to cause chlorosis overall, death of mid and lower leaves and eventual rot of the stems and plant death as well and stunted growth and twisted bunched together new growth.

I was seeing that and the pinholes together with other ferts rich in Zn, but now for the first time I have seen a separation in the symptoms which confirms further than Zn toxicity is quite bad for the plants when it happens.

Where as the pinholes don't appear to be anywhere as devastating. Given the speed it happened and coinciding with adding more Mn than Flourish did itself is a strong correlation that it is Mn that causes that issue, not 100% on that but pretty confident.


So I think my experiment of more Mn didn't help at all, only sped up the OD on that most likely.

Googled Mn toxicity and looks pretty much like what I see, more the pinholes appearing and getting larger with time while dosing is maintained than the other symptoms mentioned, but I do see a little of that in the red root floaters.


So, I'll dial it back, and cancel the Mn supplement. I need to clean the filter anyway and I'll perform a 30% WC.

I should have my autodoser in a few days, so I can perhaps try the same routine for Flourish that seemed to work well, and integrate a day break every few days, just to maybe in theory allow elements that have accumulated a chance to be absorbed by the plants or otherwise become unavailable so it doesn't just keep accumulating.

The last strategy, the one I am trying to avoid, is to do a WC every X amount of weeks, whatever that works out to be.

There still exists some narrow margin for any sort of healthy growth and toxic effects, but at least I have eliminated a few causes and widen that margin quite a bit.

 

[vlad01]

Very confident I have nailed the issue now.

It appeared to be a combo or at least a boron deficiency and possibly an accumulation of other traces to the point of toxicity or maybe the lack of boron leads to the other micros becoming toxic from poor uptake from not enough boron.

I personally think the former for this reasoning.


Since I have a pretty high bio-load from having axolotls, I never need to dose nitrogen even with the reasonably high plant mass and many of them being fast growing, that suggests the high bio-load.

Oddly, phosphorous is one I have to dose all the time as it it consumed pretty quick despite the bio-load. That was a small clue that the feeding of the axolotls might not provide a broad range or funky ratios of the nutrients.

I stumbled across a way to test boron with good sensitivity at home using ethanol and turmeric powder mix drop method.

I found that the tap water contained a considerable amount of apparent boron. I used known sources to compare to and controls such as distilled water. I tested my test bowl which was a trial of walstad, it was high in boron. I just occasionally sprinkled in a single food pellet once a week or few.

The tank showed basically nothing like the control.

Adding flourish + a larger WC change made everything do well for about a week before problems came in, More or less dosing afterwards of flourish did not fix the issue. As described, there was no margin for toxic effects or deficiency. after this one week or so period following the WC.

I also found info of trace element requirements for plants vs animals.

Since I feed my axolotls worms only, they refuse to eat pellets anymore. I suspected that the worms are missing or adding something in excess vs a board fert or plant based organic fert such as the seasol I have used with success before.

Turns out that animals use all the trace elements that plants use except boron, so I hypothesize that the worms lack boron or at extremely poor in it, but otherwise provide everything else in varying ratios.

Flourish has a pretty much complete profile minus the macros in good ratios.

So what I think is happening is that I am providing more than enough trace elements with the feed and the flourish combined at lower doses, but lack the boron levels needed to be well balanced. Adding much higher doses of flourish corrects the boron levels needed, but ends up likely overdoing everything else as there is already those with the feed input.


So I set out to make a boron add on solution to the safe non toxic dosing amount of flourish determined, basically anything under 5ml daily seemed to be non toxic long term but perpetually deficient.

I used borax and made a solution of 0.001 ppm per ml per the volume of the tank (160L ~)

Started at 1ml per day, nothing, 2 per day, after a few weeks I tried 3 and 4ml per day. I saw a small improvement, but now that I was past the dose of boron I would get at 6-7ml of flourish alone which I knew worked short term, I started to think that boron in the form of borax wasn't working well due to maybe availability to the plants.

So I bought some boric acid which finally came out of the woodwork on the market here, last year I was not able to find it anywhere other than expensive places like Sigma Ulrich.

Suddenly I was able to get it everywhere. It may have been a controlled chemical in Australia?

Anyway, made a new solution with the same ppm per ml, changed nothing else. I got an immediate response at 3ml per day but not quite right yet, 4ml started to show normal leaves on the canary plants being the frogbit and the hygros. But before I got to try it long enough and higher dosing, we got the keys for the new house we had been waiting for over 4 years to get built.

I moved the tank over to the garage of the new house for now, but I resumed the experiment with now minus duckweed and far less floaters as they took over too much.

Fresh water in there, 100% WC. So the frogbit are growing normal leaves now and it will be interesting to see for how long. I normally only got 1.5 weeks with a WC and the same or similar regime with flourish and macros only. Given that the tap water and WC added a bunch of boron, this dosing daily should hopefully maintain it for a good while. If I have good results for a number or several weeks I know that was it for sure, but evident and logic points to that being the case either way.


Soon, after I repaint the stand with fresh satin clear as I was never happy with the first time, lid is already repainted and looks awesome, I will be redoing the entire tank from scratch with a hybrid walstad-ish wood pellet substrate.

My bowl has finally hit great success using wood pellets after many attempts of other substrates including compost/worm castings. None of them really produces much if any co2.
Peat moss takes months for the humic acid and CEC to deplete to allow bacteria to function. Wood pellets work the same as peat but work almost straight away, within about a week for my bowl.

So I will be keeping only some of the plants and replacing most non root feeders with root feeders or at least ones that can feed from the roots ok.

That way I can just concentrate of making tabs every several months if needed, and then have column feeders like, floaters, java and anubias that aren't so crazy fussy, feed from a much easier and infrequent regiment

I have also made my own mix of sieved Turface MVP to 1-1.5mm grains and sieved onyx sand to rid the silt and powder to have that 1mm + sizes to max of about 2mm.

That ended up being maybe 45/55 mix of onyx/turface course sand for the cap. Before we moved, I spent a few weeks pre-cycling the sand and it did so very well and just completed at the new house after a few days. We are still not moved in, but 90% of our stuff is already there.

So, I'll update this in a while with likely the new layout and substrate and new walstad friendly plants.







Also, this wood pellet walstad/hybrid bowl is only maybe 2 weeks old max and is doing amazing! Grows a noticeable amount each day. The plants have grown a lot more than in this pic from about 3-4 days ago. It really is remarkable how well this combo works and how underwheming the others were prior.

I got this what I think I identified as a native Australian milfoil from the local river bank thinking it was some invasive species, but apprently not. The immersed form gave way to submerged very quickly, within a few days.

The plants pearl strongly everyday. So I am def switching out to this method and tossing my preped peat moss which has been a real pain to get to the condition I want it in after several weeks of conditioning it, it's also a lot messier than the wood pellets and a lot more acidic. The bowl sits at around 6.7ph, and drops to about 7.5 after direct light expose. All indicative of co2 production and consumption. Very cool!