Flourish and yellowing Java fern

[mommy2girls!]

This is the one the petco guy said is good. Comprehensive? It also happened to be the only one they had here’s the second leaf I’m going to trim today.It starts at the tip and travels down the spine then the whole leaf starts turning white yellow then brown. Maybe it is just old leaves. Just seems to only happen when I put the ferts. Within a day it starts. Also some of the new leaves are curled instead of flat. I was giving it .5ml once every 7-10 days. That is way less than the bottle says. I’m scared to give a full dose or my whole plant may turn yellow.
Thanks for the well wishes for my ember. She seems ok. The spot is fading now and is completely smooth like fishy skin. I think it was just a scratch. The spot now reminds me of the pink new skin after a scab comes off. Except hers is white. I like the tank better without that rock anyway.

 

[mommy2girls!]

So I’ve been reading a lot about these fertilizers and plant deficiencies. I am now leaning toward the idea that it is indeed an imbalance in nutrients causing the yellowing and necrosis of my Java ferns older leaves. I am now starting to see pinholes in the new leaves lending to a potassium deficiency. Now from what I understand is that if your water is initially low in potassium a surge in growth may deplete it quickly. Now every time I add the flourish comprehensive within 24hrs I see new leaf buds coming from the rhizome. My anubias and hornwort have both doubled in size and the windelov is filling out nicely from its big chop. In other words lots of rapid growth eating up all my potassium. And now the recent pinholes is what is pushing me to this conclusion. Does it sound like I’m on the right track?
So question: do I buy flourish potassium and add more stuff to my tank? Or is there a better fertilizer and skip flourish all together? My bladder snails don’t do well with flourish anyways. I always have 3-4 die straight off after adding it.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

There are more ferts on the market than plants I sometimes thing. Most of my first and only bottle of Floruish went down the toilet. SInce I have only used Tropica ferts. @2 years ago it was a single comprehensive fert. Today it is two different ferts. I sent all new plant folks to the Tropica site as one of the better plants resources out there.
https://tropica.com/en/

Tropica Aquarium Plants is a privately owned Danish company, based in Egå near Aarhus. The company was founded by Holger Windeløv in 1970. In 2004, the company was sold to JPS Clemens, due to a generational change and the new owners established a new nursery garden in 2007 as the base of a long-term strategy.

I am sure you are familiar with:

Microsorum pteropus 'Windeløv' is a patented variety of Microsorum pteropus, named after Tropica's founder Holger Windeløv.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Oops, forgto to mention above that dead leave shoudl always be removed as soon as you know they are on the way out. The plant may keep wasting resources on them even as it is allowing them to die. I dirt gardened for years before I transferred that hobby into glass boxes filled with water etc.

Good growth and dying leaves soon after getting a new plant is a sure sign it was grown emersed and needs to lose those leave. So help the plant along by rempving them well before they go beyon yellow to dissolving.

 

[mommy2girls!]

We’ll see I’ve had that plant for nearly a year and never had dying leaves until adding flourish

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Ferns do lose leaves. Sometimes this and making baby plants occurs in a short time frame as well on a leaf. Either way, remove any leaf that is clearly on its way out. You should not wait until it is all yellowed and clearly dead and about to start dissolving.

I find it hard to believe that adding a fert would kill just one leaf. If you lost a bunch of leaves, that would be different. Ultimately, the plant realizes a leaf is truly "gone" and then it gets no more nutrition wasted on it. The odds favor that here, imo.

 

[fishorama]

So how are your ferns doing now? I'm with TTA, some leaves are slow to die...& slow to grow new leaves.

Extra ferts don't help slow growers like java fern & anubias. But excess ferts can hasten a leaf to die.

You're on the right track, clip off any leaf that is starting to yellow...unless it's leaf edges show a tiny bit of new growth. Roots can almost look like BBA at first. But tiny leaves will show up eventually. If the entire leaf looks "iffy" you can cut it off & let it float in your tank as it grows baby fernlets. If you get tired of waiting you can toss it & hope for a new round of growth on newer leaves. Java ferns are very hard to kill even if they're unhappy. I recently had a severe water issue & the old java leaves all turned brown. I picked those off & very slowly, it's recovering.

 

[mommy2girls!]

The flourish sure did expedite the emergence of growth in my tank. I have completely stopped adding it to both of my tanks. the Java immediately stopped yellowing. I still have 4 of the large old leaves left. I’m positive that if I add flourish again they would soon be gone also. The many new leaves that grew rapidly are all curled and have pinholes. Not severely though. Not severely deformed and maybe 2-3 holes per leaf Another plus to discontinuing the flourish is that I haven’t noticed any snails dying. By rapid growth I mean I have 12 new leaves about 4-5 inches long that grew in about 3 week span while using a low dose of flourish. Seems strange for a slow grower.
In the snail tank the hornwort gained a good 6 inches and was starting to look like it was recovering from its disinfection but after stopping the flourish it has lost many more needles than it was before.
I’ve been looking into thrive -s for an all in one fertilizer that is invertebrate safe. But it’s hard to justify the high price tag for a product that may not work. For now I’m just letting it sit without any fertilizer.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

You do realize that the point of fertilizer is to make plants grow?????
You do realize that over time plants lose leaves and grow new ones and that this is perfectly normal?

Akso, pinholes in leaves are caused by nutrient deficiency, usually a lack of potassium as you noted.

I never finished my first and only bottle of SeaChem Flourish. I switched to Tropica ferts about 22 years ago and still am using them today.

Over the years I have mixed my own ferts trying to mirror Tropica and it was not a great result. I also messed with some of the SeaChem individual nutrients- N, P and K. I gave that up as well.

In the end, I use Tropica because they are a world leader in producing aquatic plants. Their main business is producing plants by various means. On the other hand SeaChem, as far as I know doesn't grow plants and doesn't sell plants. Given the choice to use what one of, if not the worlds leading grower of aquatic plants uses or what SeaChem makes, I chose Tropica.

When I am sick and I need medicine. I do not ask the manufacturers of medicines what I should use, I ask my doctor.

One last observation here. The more your plants grow, the more ferts they need. The more ferts you provide (up to a point) the more the plants will grow. The more plants grow, the more leaves they get. Plant leaves are not immortal, they do die. This doesn't mean the plant is dying, just that some leaves do.

I will suggest this once more. Go to the Tropica site, read and read and read. http://tropica.com/en/

 

[mommy2girls!]

Yes I realize fertilizer is to help plants grow and also to be healthier and stronger hence why I had originally bought it for my dying hornwort that didn’t like being disinfected. However here everybody keeps reiterating that fertilizers do nothing for Anubias and Java. I’m just saying it did force or entice mine to grow quite a bit in a relatively short period of time.
all of my Java was fine until I added flourish. Then suddenly same day I add the ferts my ferns are yellowing and snails are dying. And I only used .5ml at water change which is barely less than a full dose. I never added more without a wc. Each following week the same scenario played out. It only stopped when I stopped adding flourish. And yes I understand plants lose leaves and grow new ones. It just seems like a very big coincidence. Also that as soon as I start flourish comprehensive suddenly I now have a new potassium deficiency. And by the way they have another bottle to buy to fix the problem created by the first purchase.
I visited the link provided for tropica but either their fertilizer is not applicable to my tanks or I’m missing something. I see 2 choices. The premium nutrition says “Suitable for aquariums with few or slow-growing plants and many fish”
I don’t have many fish. I only have 4 embers and 4 neons 1/2 inch or less each with a few snails.
and the other fertilizer, specialized nutrition, says
“Suitable for aquariums with many and fast-growing plants” which I don’t have either.
At least the thrive-s says it’s specifically made for invertebrates and guaranteed to not kill my snails. It does have really good customer reviews. But ultimately I don’t know if it would be good for my tank without trying it. I’m just very nervous adding stuff to my fish. As fishorama is fully aware I am very attached to my tiny group and would hate to add something that might harm them. I had the flourish for 3 weeks before I finally added it. Now I know why I had such a bad gut feeling.