• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Achieving redish color in plants such a eleoharis and glosso

Antoni

Antoni

Member
Joined
25 Jan 2009
Messages
816
Location
Pompey
Dear friends,
while I was browsing the net I came across to famous scapes, that leave a deep impression in me.

1.jpg


and

index_04.jpg


Im really interested in how do they achieve redish color in such a plants like:
Eleocharis acicularis in the second one and the Glossostigma elatinoides in the first scape?
There is even a difference in the color of the Glosso for creating an impression of a path between rocks!?

Does anybody has observations on this matter? How this could be achieved?

Regards
 
Thanks Steve,
Yes you can achieve reddish color with more light and iron on plants like ludwigia, rotala and etc, but glosso and eleoharis - that seems to me a bit difficult. If you get a closer look, you will find that just part of the glosso is reddish and that is not on a random bases.

Regards
 
Just a list of a few thoughts of my experiences.
Contrary to popular belief adding lots of iron has no affect on making plants go red. As long as plants have enough then adding extra makes no difference.
Limiting NO3 can give a few plants a pinkish hue to them but the downside is you end up with a tank full of sad looking plants.
I never found having mega lighting made plants go any redder than what you get with a reasonable amount of light.
Good levels of PO4 and supposedly hardness helps bring out the best in the colours of plants but doesn't turn them red.
Lighting spectrum is the one area where I found it made a massive difference to the colours of plants. It looks like that having a strong blue peak (possibly even UV) gives plants a greater amount red colouring.

And now the disclaimer.
These are just my observations so please don't take them as gospel.

James
 
Thanks James, as usual you give me a good direction for research!
So if only the light matters, then for the above purpose should be used light in the range 400-500nm and probably 10 000 or 11 000 K.
But this is what I found:
Amano has stated for the second aquarium http://www.aquajournal.net/suikei_data/ ... ry_03.html that he is using NA lamps, which are stated to have blue spectrum and lower color temperature (8000 K) to create natural look of the tank.
"NA Lamp with an additional green spectrum.
The New NA Lamp has the highest peak at 540
nanometer and another peak at 520 nanome-
ter (see the arrow in the illustration above). This
new sub-peak is adopted to bring out the most
natural colours of the aquatic plants. "

Then I start wondering which brand T5 lamps will get this effect? Amano is using T8 :shock: in this set up?!

Regards
 
samc said:
the red on the second picture is e tenellus. the way to get it red is to keep trimming it right down. the new shoots on mine are pinkish but thats with less than 2wpg so light doesnt have to be extreme with it
Click to expand...

Just try letting some Tenellus float on the surface for a few days and see how red it goes!

Cheers Steve
 
Those images have been photo shopped.

Tell you what, take a slight red image.Go to Hue and reduce it just a hair and then a bit more and watch the other colors so you do not go too far to make things look freakish. You'll see what I mean.

Say you have a green scape without reds or you do not care much about them? Try going to the other way with the hue.

the reds will really pop out.

These folks are really good journalist that take pics for CAU, they know their cameras and certainly PS.
That variety of Rotala is Singapore red, it is really red and close to that color, but the browns and greens look strange to me and I know how the effect of hue appears.

Gloss rarely gets reddish, there's a nice very red tennellus from the USA that's common here.
Even without trimming or high light, mine did very well at 1.8W/gal with 30cm raised lighting at a 60cm deep aquarium.........

Some spectrums seem to also enhance the coloration.
The giesemann aqua flora + powerchromes (1:2 ratio) on my Tek fixtures really give a much better color than the same with a 8000K HQI and 6700K PC or 8800K PC lights with equal PAR.

So I'm sold on T5 lights for a long time to come.


Regards,
Tom Barr
 
Do you have a larger version of the first picture?

i'm not sure if that is glosso along the front - it could be something like hc that's not fully carpeted and the red you can see is coming from the stone substrate?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top