How fast should I see results?

[Booswalia]

Hi,

My amazon swords seem to have pale leaves with dark veins. From what I can find on this, it seems to be an iron defficiency. I've been adding extra iron for the past week but I'm not seeing any difference. I also added a piece of Jobes Fern spikes around the roots.

1. Should I add more iron. I'm dosing about 5ml of Flourish Iron twice a week in a 25 Gallon with 110 watts of lighting?

2. Should the pale leaves darken up or will I only see results in new leaves that come in?

So far I've been really pleased with how my tank is doing, but I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants. Not sure how much to dose most of the time.

[Booswalia]

Here is a photo that might help.

http://www.sonnys.ca/photos/amazon.JPG

and another....not sure what this plant is.

http://www.sonnys.ca/photos/amazon2.JPG

I'm starting to get some algae too. But unless I can get some SAEs and ottos, I'm afraid I may have to live with it.

[TomFromStLouis]

One thing I can say is that you should be able to measure yoru iron levels in in the water which will help you to determine dosages.

[Booswalia]

I've never been able to get a reading of any iron in my water which makes me think it's the kit. I have a new kit on order, but it may be a few weeks before it gets here.

[inxs]

Booswalia: regarding the iron test - it's one of the most unreliable tests. Even good high end kits don't always show accurate results. One thing you might want to try is this: using your test that you have now, take a couple of samples. Do one regularly and the second either 2X, 5X or 10X to see if you do get results (you can divide it afterwards to get the right reading).
Now for the important part: do this in the evening, make sure you shake the chemicals first and the test later vigorously for more time than it calls for - then go to bed and check the test in the morning (iron tests are notoriously slow to develope)

The fact that you have pale spots AND algae may be an indication of nutritional imbalance. You may be low on (N) nitrate, (P) phosphate or (K) potassium or even CO2 for that matter.

I would check those first and make sure especially the (N) is adequate.

Without getting too longwinded - the reason you may have problems that don't seem specific to a certain nutrient rather another which is present is this:
Plants need the spectrum of nutrients to be able to utilize the others. If your problem seems specific to low potassium levels and you measure , come up with high levels of potassium , you may in fact have low levels of CO2 which makes the plants unable to utilize the potassium. This means you may have to add CO2 for the plants to utilize the Potassium of which there may be a lot (mostly due to the plants inability to take it up).

Hope this helps a little instead of confusing.

As far as a change in the plants , it usually takes about 6 weeks to see a difference so you need to dose heavily on the patience.;)

Swords are heavy rootfeeders and I used to bury root tabs with iron under the roots, also used jobes but be careful as there is a fair amount of amonia in those and if you accidentaly dig one up and leave it expsed in the watercolumn you will instantly get GW.

When I had problems with yellowing in the swords I added calciumpills (regular for human consumption) under the roots I also ended up adding a LOT more nitrate as they soaked that up.
You may want to try that.

In the end it was a bristlenosed pleco that was rasping the leaves and ended up getting evicted.

[rdmpe]

Can't help you with the nutrients much, but I can tell you that an SAE and a half dozen 1" ottos will have the algae cleaned up in no time flat!!!

[Booswalia]

rdmpe, If I could get some of those I would. I'm having a very hard time finding any.

inxs, Thanks. My nitrate is usually around 5 or 6ppm. I am adding phosphorus and potassium and trace. (I'm really just guessing at the amounts though)

I have plenty of Co2 now. Still adjusting my new pressurized system. Perhaps that will solve all my problems??? Oh, I can wish.

I have lots of pearling now, so maybe I just need the dose of patients to see some results.

I have thought about the calcium though. The leaves on the second photo look a little distorted to me and perhaps that's a calcium shortage.

Thanks for your help.