plants melting

[torpedobarb]

I have had my Limno Aromatica melting now for a few weeks.. was growing fine before my tank broke. also my rotala macrandra and limno sp mini melting from the bottom up. I have almost 4 wpg going on the tank. pressurized co2 registering at almost 30ppm.. I dose my ferts regularly. why would I be having this problem now. I use the seachem flourish root tabs in the substrate. I don't know what is going on. I have plenty of water flow.. 2 powerheads with 2 canister filters.

my P stellatus is growing like crazy.. ludwigia cuba growing nicely.. the pantanal is growing fine. the P yatabenus (spelled wrong I know) is fine.. sunset hygro is fine. rotala vietnam is fine, blyxa aubertii is fine.. so I need help in figuring out what is going on. TIA, Ken

I am new to this forum.. everyone here seems to know their stuff.. so I figured I would give it a shot

 

[Tom Barr]

Try some larger water changes, filter cleaning and also...........while obvious if you think about it.......prune the tank!

If you had been okay prior, then several of these fast growing weeds took off, the demand for nutrients, light and CO2 certainly increased.

Some plants are going to be more aggressive than others.
So they will grow well while the others might not.

If you start out with say 50 grams of dry weight when you things are fine in a decent sized aquarium, then you 2x-3x that biomass, you will have a lot more demand for CO2, nutrients etc.

I'd highly suggest folks keep this in mind as many of these plants at 4w/gal and higher CO2 will grow and double the biomass in 2-3 weeks time.

Obviously if you changed nothing over that same time frame, you cannot expect the plants to do as well in terms of CO2, light and nutrients gathering ability.

You need to add more ferts, CO2 and light you really cannot change except via pruning.

Also, CO2 and circulation also decline a great deal when the biomas sincreases, it starts blocking a lot more flow.

All good reasons to keep up on the gardening.........and rotting plants, melting etc, always a bad sign, clean and water change etc. You should remove all that material.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[JDowns]

Correct me if I'm wrong since this is observational at best.

Past experience which is actually more current then past.

I recently experimented with higher lighting to test different scenarios in my 150g which has Aromatica in it.

I upped my HO T5 lighting from 8hrs 160w / 3hrs 160w midday to 8hrs 240w / 4hrs 160w. So within my lightings setup abilities a moderate increase.

To compensate for the additional lighting I scaled up my daily dosing a smidgen for a 20 day test cycle. But mistakenly did not compensate to add additional GH.

The only plants that seemed to be affected was Aromatica and Polyesperma 'Sunset. The bottom leaves of the Aromatica melted and there was significant color loss (a few plants became a pale yellow to white). also the stems bent as if to not grow upwards to reach the lighting. The same thing happened to the Sunset but without the major leaf loss. All other plants did fine and really without a big difference in growth rates. The only notable difference was Limnophila sp. 'Mini' and Ludwiga Glandulosa colored up from maroon to purple. Lotus growth skyrocketed with massive leaves. Rotala sp Green, Stargrass, Blyxa J., Mattagrossense, Rotala Colorat, Hygro 'Tiger'; all grew a little quicker but as far as any aspect physiologically with no difference to justify the increase in lighting.

I'm confident that I have adequate flow; 2 1200gph pumps, one as a booster to a C360 canister, the other to a diffuser/polisher.

I'm also confident that I have adequate CO2, although this can always be a "?". I utilize both mist and diffusion. Drop checker is yellow/green 24/7 with 4 dkh solution. I get very little change in drop checker color over the course of the evening.

Can Aromatica suffer in this scenario from to low a level of Ca and Mg? I seem to remember reading in the past on APD that Aromatica coloration can be improved with increasing GH, but I may be remembering incorrectly.

I'm a week tomorrow back into the original lighting and dosing routine and the Aromatica is starting to regain its coloration. Even after replanting the tops and taking a few inches off the bottoms.

I know there is a lesson to gain from this, besides don't forget to increase GH Booster along with lighting.

 

[Tom Barr]

Both my tap and the tap in SF is very soft.
No real issues, but it does grow in harder water also.

Generally, folks that know this(they have soft GH's) add GH booster.
Adding another 1-2 degrees is plenty.
That rules that out fast and is a basic direction for every dosing routine I've written since the mid 1990's.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[Tom Barr]

Yes, adding more Gh can increase color in some species, particularly with higher light.

Regards.
Tom Barr

 

[torpedobarb]

I will do a larger water change and trim the plants back some.. the only ones that are growing out of control really is the polysperma sunset hygro.. I am going to clip it down..
and up my ferts a little bit.

this can be so overwhelming when first starting out..