pearling conditions

Too much water flow?

 

Well, just a thought as some mention that pearling can be limited if the flow is a bit strong.

I had 144 watts (36x4) PC fixture over my 72 gal tank (so pretty much right at 2 wpg) and had very limited to practically no pearling, I was dosing only Flourish micros at the time (likely decent nitrates and phosphates though from the fish load). Without changing anything else I replaced that light fixture with two Hagen T5 HO fixtures with 54 watt x 4 (though to be honest it seemed almost twice the brightness of the previous fixture to my eye, better reflectors and T5 vs. PC I guess) and within 20 minutes had VERY heavy pearling.

So maybe more light?

 

I have had plant leaves pearl when in the sunshine. The same species in the shade in the same tank didn't pearl.

This occured in a non-CO2 tank with 2WPG lighting.

A plant doesn't have to pearl to be healthy. Oxygen is a waste product from the plant's metabolism. It could be argued that a pearling plant is being overworked, it's metabolism being artificially raised and its life shortened as a result.

Bill

 

>>>>It could be argued that a pearling plant is being overworked, it's metabolism being artificially raised and its life shortened as a result.

Could very well be. But for most of us doing planted tanks that's the point!

 

I have 2wpg and I do see pearling, but only on about the top 3 or 4" below the surface. Light is a big factor.

 

Given optimal conditions, you can provide more nutrients or stimulation to a plant (or to most organisms) than it needs to live an "optimum" life.

Consider the man who lives in a perfect climate with clean air but consumes 2000 calories a day more than he needs. His body is being overworked and his lifespan is being shortened.

HTH

Bill

 

Not all plants pearl under the same conditions. HC, for example pearls profusely. But, my Limnophila aromatica, growing rapidly and very healthy hardly ever pearled. Pearling is enjoyable to see, because it is like a gold star on your homework, but it isn't essential for your plants to be doing well.

 

Also at 2 wpg of compact PC and pearling can go to the substrate level.
But usually it is seen in the top 1/2 of the tank on L aromatica, L Repens, Sunset Hydro, D sag., A Reineckii and a few like Echinodorus x barthii only pearl on the underside of the leaf. C Bacopa hardly ever even at the surface??

Biggest thing I've seen is keeping up with the CO2 as the tank grows in and this can exceed the green DC reading.

 

My plants pearl alot but i have had 2 weeks to finetune everything slowly every day.

Tank: 450L
Light: 4x 80 watt
Plantfood : 25ml Tropica fert every day.
co2: around 30-45 ppm. dropchecker is green on edge to become yellow.
Filter: Fluval FX 5 restricted flow and i use a diy spraybar so my plants just about moves in the tank.

Fert is probobly not enough but for the moment thats what i use.

This setup works for me it has taken me about 1 year to get to this point and about the latest 2 weeks to finetune (there went my vacation).

 

Something is not being met and I say it's Co2. Why? As long as you truly have good concentration of Co2 in the water you will get pearling even if lighting is under 2wpg. You will not get the crazy bubble action as most see under higher light setups but you will definitely get consistent bubbles .

 

This is normal

This is suspect and I agree regarding the speed of change.

This is also suspect.

With those rapid changes I suggest you purchase a correctly prepared KH standard because yours it definitely off. Making a KH standard requires a little more precision than just adding BS into distilled water.

I use Carbon (Matrix Carbon) and Purigen and experience no such issues

 

There's nothing wrong with using a lab prep'd KH standard, I use it and I highly suggest you do the same. You are too new to Co2 to have an inaccurate gauge for Co2 and as you can tell, it's not an easy task to get it right as a newb

I got mine from Billionz website, but there is another source over at Plantedtank.net (Orlando from Green leaf Aquariums).

I'm not familiar with their stuff but I would hope so. Maybe someone else can chime in with that confirmation.

 

I disagree about the KH standard. If your KH test kit is good, making your own by trial and error is an adequate way to get the 4 dKH water. Just be sure that you use distilled or deionized water. Any error in the KH of that water results in an equal error in the ppm of CO2. This is not a problem if you get within 10-20% of the right KH. After all, the best a drop checker can do is get you to within about 20 to 40 ppm of CO2, because very small errors in reading the color of the drop checker make a big difference in the CO2 ppm.

All we are doing with a drop checker is working around the problem that so many of us had using the pH/KH/CO2 chart to measure CO2 - that was where those measurements indicated that we had 100-150 ppm of CO2, but we still had bad BBA and no gasping fish, indicating that our actual ppm was closer to 10 than 100. Precision in measuring CO2 ppm just isn't available for less than $1000 or more.

 

I made my own 4KH water. I don't care that much about getting exact results - just so I can see if it's going up or down. The bba tells me if it's going TOO low....which consistently happens when I get to the darker green/blue green area. So I think my homemade preparation is fairly close. My plants tell me which color I want my drop checker...when it's greenish yellow, they grow like mad. That's all I care about. Good to change out your solution once in a while though, if in doubt. I haven't changed mine, though, in months, and it's still working just as when I first put it in.

I put carbon in my filter a few months back. I have no idea if it was coincidence or not, or what happened, but within days my hygrophila polysperma, which I haven't been able to kill for over a year of experimentation and messing around with co2, lights, ferts, etc., suddenly started developing strange new growth, it looks like parts of the leaves were actually chewed off (but they weren't). After a week or two, can't remember exactly, I put together that I added the carbon right around when this started. So I removed it. Since then, doing lots of ferts and upping co2, it's just now starting to come around and grow normally again. Coincidence, possibly, but I won't be attempting carbon again anytime soon. As a sidenote, my tap water has 0 GH and KH, and I have to add magnesium/calcium each water change for the plants. Not sure if there was something else there that was CLOSE to deficient (since my tap water is so devoid of anything), that the carbon maybe pushed over the edge into major deficiency? Anyway, I'm not risking it again. Also I should note that I decided to start using spring water instead of my tap water, it was really after I did the first water change with this that my hygro started coming around a bit more. Many people report having no problems with carbon, but many people also have fairly hard water that probably has a lot more stuff in it than mine does naturally.