Whats missing - stange plant growth

A

alarict

AC Members
Sep 22, 2008
6
0
0
Bay Area, CA
Well I think something is missing - please help... :eek3:

After several months of good plant growth and minimal algae an amazon sword's leaves are growing in ever whiter and twisted (see pic). Suspected Calcium deficiency so dose 1 teasp of CACO3 post WC (once a week), this has made no difference and the leaves continue to grow lighter and twisted. Local tap water has an average of 15ppm Ca (according to the local water reports).

Stats: 55g, heavily planted, Temp 76-80, 3 Watts per gallon. pH 7.2, KH 4.8-5.2, NO3 12-18ppm, Amonia=0, PO4=0, Pressurized CO2.
Dosing: 30mL Potassium weekly, NO3 as needed to maintain above, Fe 2mL per week, Trace 2mL every other week. 3/4 teasp CACO3 and 1/4 teasp MGSO4 once a week after WC.

Maintenance: W-Change about 40% weekly (plant bubbling increases significantly for several hours after the WC then slows). Substrate consists of Fluorite and gravel with 10 plant tabs dotted round (the sword has one in its roots). The plants consume less and less CO2, the diffuser now fills and I let out some gas every third day.

deficiency734.jpg
 
Do you dose phosphate? Introduce phosphate to your dosing. Try upping the co2 a little bit. How long do you have the lights on? Keep it up
 
avionics30 said:
I use chucks plsnted aquarium calculator. It comes in handy and has never failed me!

http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_aquacalc.htm
Click to expand...

Then you've been lucky. If you start adding other buffers or other acids than bicarbonate and CO2, then it's out of the window. I use peat filtration to lower GH and even without CO2 injection the calculator claims I have 14ppm CO2, which I most certainly don't. When I inject, the calculator claims 90ppm+, which would be fatal.

A better guide is to take the pH before injection and inject enough CO2 to depress it by one point. But the secure way is to measure CO2 using a drop checker (which uses 4KH water which has no buffers or acids other than bicarbonate and CO2) or similar device.
 
KarlTh said:
Then you've been lucky. If you start adding other buffers or other acids than bicarbonate and CO2, then it's out of the window. I use peat filtration to lower GH and even without CO2 injection the calculator claims I have 14ppm CO2, which I most certainly don't. When I inject, the calculator claims 90ppm+, which would be fatal.

A better guide is to take the pH before injection and inject enough CO2 to depress it by one point. But the secure way is to measure CO2 using a drop checker (which uses 4KH water which has no buffers or acids other than bicarbonate and CO2) or similar device.
Click to expand...


Sorry about any confusion. Based on the abundance of information that was given by the OP, I was pretty confident that there were no other acids or pete in the system. You are correct. If you buffer your water with any Ph altering medium other than calcium carbonate or CO2, then the calculator will be off. As I do not alter my water chemistry with chemicals, this calculator works for me. I try to promote natural methods of chaning water parameters rather than using chemicals.

To pu this al lback in perspective, my water Ph is 6.9 and the Kh is typically 3. I drive that down to 6.5 with CO2 and everyone is happy!
 
NeonFlux said:
Do you dose phosphate? Introduce phosphate to your dosing. Try upping the co2 a little bit. How long do you have the lights on? Keep it up
Click to expand...

A piece of advice I was given was make sure the ratio of nitrates/phosphate was 1 and try to keep the nitrates at 10. This would make the OPs tank a little low on phosphates. (I am just repeating what I was told, I don't have enough experience to evaluate the quality of the advice.)
 
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