Water too hard for Amazon Sword

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JustPatrick

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Mar 16, 2005
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Water too hard for Amazon Sword?

In my Eclipse 6, I've got an amazon sword planted has some brown spots and holes in a few of the leaves and I've had to prune a couple of dead leaves. The hornwort that's also in the tank does quite well.

A couple of weeks ago I got test kits (the AP Master and the AP hardness kits) and the water parameters were good except the nitrates were quite high (a couple of water changes fixed that). Currently the paramters are:

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 20
dGH: 11
dKH: 4
pH: 7.4 - 7.6

Could the hardness be to blame for the problems with the sword? The light is switched on about 12 hours a day (I dont recall the wattage right now).
 
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JustPatrick

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Harlock said:
My water is much harder than yours and my amazon sword looks lovely.
Any suggestions? I've ordered some flourish and flourish excel, hopefully that will improve the situation? CO2? (I don't really have room for it) or More/Less light?
 

Harlock

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Well, without knowing the wattage and size of tank you have I couldn't responsibly answer the lighting quesitons. Flourish and Flourish Excel may help. No need to inject CO2 if you are using Excel. It is carbon. I've always fertilized mine, so that may be part of it.
 

JustPatrick

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Harlock said:
Well, without knowing the wattage and size of tank you have I couldn't responsibly answer the lighting quesitons. Flourish and Flourish Excel may help. No need to inject CO2 if you are using Excel. It is carbon. I've always fertilized mine, so that may be part of it.
Stock Eclipse System 6 - 6 Gallon, 8-watt flourescent bulb (1.33wpg)

Thanks for the help.
 

Harlock

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That's not a lot of light at all for an amazon. Smaller tanks are harder to light too, so the WPG rule breaks down on them and then breaks in a good way in extra large tanks. You might try it with the ferts and carbon, but with that light, don't expcet too much.
 

JustPatrick

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Harlock said:
That's not a lot of light at all for an amazon. Smaller tanks are harder to light too, so the WPG rule breaks down on them and then breaks in a good way in extra large tanks. You might try it with the ferts and carbon, but with that light, don't expcet too much.

Bummer. I haven't been able to locate any higher-power lights to fit the existing socket (T-5, 12inch).

What about just leaving the light on more hours per day?
 

alex7ktrc

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Hey Harlock, what kind of fertilizer do you use, and how is it applied?
 

XMAN

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You will probably want to fertilize the substrate with something like jobe's plant spikes, rather than use a water column fertilizer.
 

Blinky

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JustPatrick said:
Bummer. I haven't been able to locate any higher-power lights to fit the existing socket (T-5, 12inch).

What about just leaving the light on more hours per day?
Unfortunately, each type of fluorescent light has its own type of ballast and end cap, you can't use multiple types/wattages in one fixture as you can with incandescent bulbs.
AFAIK, plants don't really benefit from a photoperiod longer than ~12h. Algae, on the other hand, may get out of hand so I wouldn't leave the lights on for too long.
I've seen very small T-5 fixtures at home improvement stores (~8-10") that you might be able to fit into your hood (I'm not familiar with the design of Eclipse hoods so I may be wrong here) - they're meant to be stuck/screwed under a cabinet or shelf. T-5 lamps produce a lot of light per watt, but even so with only 1.33WPG (and the rule doesn't really apply on a 6g tank, as Harlock said) a sword may not do well.
Try to make sure you're fertilizing with traces, doing weekly 50% water changes (this replenishes nutrients found in tap water) and keeping NO3 ~10ppm and PO4 ~0.5 - 1ppm. Potassium (K) is very important for plants - if you're not dosing K, it would be a good idea to find either a bottled fertilizer or use stump remover (KNO3) to make sure your plants are getting enough. I'd stay away from Jobe's plant spikes - I've heard too many horror stories about algae blooms and imbalances occuring in tanks when they're uprooted.
 
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