pearling stops in 3 days

brad

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Aug 2, 2005
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I`ve noticed lately that my plants will pearl for a couple of days after I do a water change. After 3-4 days, the pearling stops. Do a water change, and i`m good for another couple of days. what gives?

here`s what I dose in a week. 33 gallons with 55 watts of light.
nitrate:20 ppm per week.
po4: 3 rice grain size pinches
k: some here, some there
traces. 20-30 ppm a week.
50% water changes every week.
 

Vladimir Zhurov

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Aug 25, 2006
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Re: pearling stops in 3 days

Do you supplement with CO2, cause you did not mention it?

But regardless, the answer, most likely, is that your tank CO2 level is too low to support pearling. Most tap waters have high level of dissolved CO2, so you add CO2 with WC - pearling starts. CO2 is quickly depleted by plants/degassing and pearling stops in a few days. Till next WC and addition of CO2.

If you will prepare water for WC in the following way you should see no pearling: get a bucket big enough to hold water that you need to perform WC, aerate it quite strongly overnight with air pump. This will degass excess CO2 from tap water.

Regards.

Vladimir.
 

brad

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Aug 2, 2005
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Re: pearling stops in 3 days

yup. pressurized co2. Level:? enough that I had fish gasping at the surface, then turned it down a hair. By the end of the day, the fish still show signs of gasping. Usually just before lights out so I don`t concern myself with it too much.
 

alexperez

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Jan 24, 2005
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Re: pearling stops in 3 days

Just a thought,

You might be running out of a needed nutrient by the 3rd day that is being furnished through a water change.

I use to have the same thing happen to me. After about 3-4 days the pearling would greatly diminish. I started adding one nutrient at a time to see if pearling would increase. And I noticed that after adding K pearling would increase, but not as much as the first 3 days. I switched to ADA Substrate before I was able to determine if it was the K or not. And haven't had that problem again.
 

brad

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Re: pearling stops in 3 days

so what could my plants be lacking that is otherwise provided by tap? Ca mg ? gh is 12 so I must have at least one of these.

At what point does organic nitrate levels become counter productive?
 

Tom Barr

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Jan 23, 2005
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Re: pearling stops in 3 days

brad said:
yup. pressurized co2. Level:? enough that I had fish gasping at the surface, then turned it down a hair. By the end of the day, the fish still show signs of gasping. Usually just before lights out so I don`t concern myself with it too much.

Well make sure you have enough surface movement, do not let it be still etc, some is good, too much can be bad(CO2 loss).

Water changes and 1-3 days later means CO2 95/100 times.
NO3/K/PO/GH/Traces can be ruled out..........do you add MgSO4?
Try it, add 1/8 teaspoon 2x a week.

If this is done, then you have ruled out everything except CO2.

I always suspect CO2 when pearling decreases.


Regards,
Tom Barr
 

brad

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Aug 2, 2005
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Re: pearling stops in 3 days

I'll get some mgso4. The aquaclear usually keeps pretty good surface movement. The water level is about even with the outflow of the filter so there is no splashing. Just movement. I'll give the mgso4 a shot.