Does anyone know why these leaves are growing warped?

[xZaiox]

Hi all,

I'm in the process of trying to figure out what's going on in my tank, and I wanted to see if anybody here can 'read' what my plants are telling me?
First off, there is a very obvious chlorosis on some of the new growth, but I'm interested in why much of the leaves are warped - in parts they look pinched, some have leaves folded over, some are crinkled, and many just don't appear to be properly formed. My ludwigia glandulosa and limnophilia sheds their lower leaves, and my s.repens appears to be displaying interveinal chlorosis in parts, as opposed to entire leaf.

My tank is 180 litres, I'm running a twinstar 900s currently dimmed to 40% intensity. Substrate is Seachem's Flourite. I'm running CO2 with a pH drop from 8.2 to roughly 6.7, this has been tested with both liquid pH test kits and a pH pen, and is also accompanied by 2 yellow drop checkers. I switched to using a co2 reactor, so I now know that CO2 micro bubbles aren't getting in the drop checkers and giving false readings. The pH is stable within 0.1 from the start of the day, to the end, and is at the correct level at lights-on. My main filter has a flow rate of 1450 L/H, I have a second filter with a rate of 550 L/H, and I have an adjustable wavemaker that can go upto 2000 L/H (it isn't set to max though). Basically, my CO2 seems high, and I have lots of flow. The leaves on all plants sway in the flow, and I would struggle to accept this as being a CO2 issue. The drop checkers have been moved around the tank and display the same colour anywhere they are placed.

I initially started out using a standard EI dosing kit from aquariumplantfood, but these issues developed. I tried changing certain parameters one at a time - I've increased potassium dosing to 30ppm, no luck. I increased PO4 to 7ppm, this seemed to reduce green spot algae but didn't fix poor plant growth, I tried increasing magnesium to 20ppm (after reading about Ca:Mg ratios), but this made no difference either. I've been informed in a previous post that this seems like an iron deficiency, well I've tried dosing upto 1ppm per week and it's still here. I've tried different chelators including EDTA, DTPA, EDDHA and EDDHSA. I also read about gluconate being a more bioavailable form for plants, and so I tried a mix of 0.2ppm DTPA Fe and 0.5ppm gluconate, this did not work either. I was also informed it may be manganese, I've dosed upto 0.3ppm Mn and this didn't help either.

I've had concerns about whether it may be a toxicity of some kind, and perhaps a leaner approach may work better... well I've been told the Tropica line of ferts have a great balance and are a good gold-standard to use, so I figured "hey, I'll just see if this works, then I should know whether or not it's my mix". I did an 80-90% water change and have now been using their 'specialised nutrition' fert for just under a week and my plants seem to be getting worse. I will be continuing for at least 2-3 weeks to properly analyse response, but it's not looking good so far.

I'm doubtful that it's related to nitrogen. My tap water apparently contains on average 19ppm, and I have a high stocking of fat fish that eat a lot. I dosed upto 30ppm of KNO3, and also tried completely stopping nitrate, it makes no difference either way.

My tap water is fairly hard, testing at around 20 dGH and 10 dKH. It seems many people have harder water though and still have success, so I'm uncertain about blaming the water supply. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm running out of ideas here

 

[Hanuman]

My conclusions are the following:

1. You are using an inert substrate which makes things much harder to handle, fert wise. Going lean under your current setup will make everything much worse;
2. You clearly have deficiencies of all sorts (pinholes, leaf twisting, yellowing, veining etc) in all your plants so this is a broad spectrum issue and they manifest slightly differently for each specie. This is not just related to some plants being finicky. Additional to this one can see yellowing in the newer leaves which indicate non-mobile nutrients deficiencies. The closer the plant is to the light, the higher the demand, so more obvious and exacerbated are the deficiencies;
3. Your dKH is very high which in itself is a major issue, and IMO your main issue;
4. The deficiencies you are experiencing in your plants are not due to a lack of ferts in the water column, considering you are EI dosing, but rather to the ability of your plants to access those nutrient. This is most likely due to your dKH and the higher PH.

It is therefore my recommendation that:

1. You lower the dKH in the way you see fit while also adjusting your CO2 (if you don't want to gas your fish); Make sure to drop your dKH progressively in a matter of several weeks and not in one go (if you don't want kill your fish);
2. wait several weeks to see how things improve, which IMO will by tweaking the above.

 

[xZaiox]

Thanks for your reply and assessment @Hanuman

3. Your dKH is very high which in itself is a major issue, and IMO your main issue;

I've been wondering about this for a while. There are so many posts on ukaps claiming that hard water isn't an issue, but I'm definitely struggling to find other causes at this point, and Tom Barr himself has repeated that carbonates can impede plant health.

There is a spotless water crate not too far from me, so I could try out deionised water for a while and see if it makes any improvements. Do you know if this would likely require a rescape? I have a fair bit of Seriyu stone in there, so I'm assuming that will be leeching carbonates, although I don't know at what rate.

What sort of dKH level would you deem acceptable?

 

[MichaelJ]

Hi @xZaiox,

Assuming your CO2 application is up to snuff:

Your extremely high GH/KH probably hampers uptake - your pH is high for that same reason. Furthermore your living in an area where your tap water is likely very thin on Magnesium, so most of your GH comes from Calcium, so your probably low on that.

Unfortunately the only way I can recommend lowering the KH (to make it easy to lower your pH by natural means) is by using RO or rainwater water (yes, I know you can use certain chemicals, but I only had disastrous experiences with that so I am keeping that too myself

Cheers,
Michael

 

[xZaiox]

Hi @MichaelJ

Your extremely high GH/KH probably hampers uptake - your pH is high for that same reason

I had feared this (since the solution is not as easy as adding ferts...)

Unfortunately the only way I can recommend lowering the KH (to make it easy to lower your pH by natural means) is by using RO or rainwater water (yes, I know you can use certain chemicals, but I only had disastrous experiences with that so I am keep that too myself

Do you have any advice on how much of my water you would replace with RO/DI water? I can access a deionised water crate within about a 15 minute drive from me, but given that my tank is 180 litres, that's a lot of water to be transporting for weekly water changes. So I'm wondering if we're talking like a 50/50 mix between tap and RO? Or an even higher percentage?

Am I also right in understanding that it's primarily dKH that impedes plants, and not dGH?

 

[Hanuman]

I've been wondering about this for a while. There are so many posts on ukaps claiming that hard water isn't an issue, but I'm definitely struggling to find other causes at this point, and Tom Barr himself has repeated that carbonates can impede plant health.

You can grow plants at higher dKH but the higher you go the less plant SPs you can grow optimally. Plants can use carbonate as a source of carbon the only problem is that it requires more energy for them to do so compared to CO2. This in turn exhausts other resources faster and makes things worse, also in part because PH is higher and in general plants will absorb most nutrients, give or take a few decimal points, in the 5.5-7PH range.

There is a spotless water crate not too far from me, so I could try out deionised water for a while and see if it makes any improvements. Do you know if this would likely require a rescape? I have a fair bit of Seriyu stone in there, so I'm assuming that will be leeching carbonates, although I don't know at what rate.

If it was me I would invest in an RO unit. I mean it will soon become VERY old VERY quick to fetch 50-100L of water weekly in your car. That's 50Kg to 100Kg. Just saying.
If you have Seiryu stones then yes a rescape may be required. You could also just swap those stone with inert ones without the need to rescape it all, although sometimes it's easier to just restart. There is no way you will be able to prevent leaching carbonates from the stone while injecting CO2. In fact it might even get worse if you leave the stones there because your PH will drop initially when reducing your KH. This PH reduction means an increased rate at which the carbonate dissolves in the water from the stones. You can easily go from 0 to 8 or even 10 dKH in a matter of days while having Seiryu stones and injecting CO2.

So I'm wondering if we're talking like a 50/50 mix between tap and RO? Or an even higher percentage?

I would start with less. Maybe 20% to allow fish to adapt. Dropping dKH so abruptly will screw with your fish's and shrimp's osmoregulation. You would probably need to remove the stones as I said above and also adjust your CO2.

Am I also right in understanding that it's primarily dKH that impedes plants, and not dGH?

Yes but very high dGH composed of mainly Ca and little Mg can also be problematic because the lack of the latter element as Michael stated. By using partially RO or rain water will partially solve your issue. You'd probably need to add some Mg. Look at your water report, it should tell you what's the Mg content of the water.

Unfortunately the only way I can recommend lowering the KH (to make it easy to lower your pH by natural means) is by using RO or rainwater water (yes, I know you can use certain chemicals, but I only had disastrous experiences with that so I am keep that too myself

HCL was probably what you used or other acids. It's doable but definitely requires one to have a proper PH probe and KH test kit to monitor the PH and KH while preparing the water outside the tank, preferably a few days prior adding it in the tank. It's painful and also get's old VERY quick.

 

[MichaelJ]

@Hanuman is right on the money... Get an RO unit. If making the water at home is cumbersome just lower you WC% or frequency... To get your KH down to a range where the pH is easier to adjust by natural means you need to get down in the 4-5'ish range. Which means 60% RO and 40% tap. This will also lower your GH to 8 GH however, the addition of say say 6-8 ppm of Mg will increase it to 9.5-10 or so.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[xZaiox]

Thank you to both @Hanuman and @MichaelJ - this has all been very helpful to me. It looks like I may have to plan a re-scape and get those rocks out of the tank. I'll likely try just using the spotless water crate for 2-3 weeks first to see if there's a positive difference, and if so, move on to getting an RO/DI unit for the home.

I'm also considering swapping the substrate to aquasoil, although I am bit concerned about the ammonia release considering I have a high fish stocking. I'll do some thinking about where I want to take the tank 🙂

 

[Andy Pierce]

Do your floating plants look ok - can we have a picture of those? What temperature are you running the tank at? I use very hard Cambridgeshire water with EI dosing and haven't noticed an issue like this. I use aquasoil but it's a couple years old now so probably not a lot of inherent nutrients left there. For your APF EI dosing, was that straight-up as in the instructions i.e. dose macros and micros on alternating days with a 50% weekly water change? Any other supplementation/treatment in the tank e.g. liquid carbon etc?

 

[xZaiox]

Do your floating plants look ok - can we have a picture of those?

I'm unsure to be honest, they seem to look different in different lights. When they're at the corner of my tank they look relatively uniform, but moved closer to the light there seems to be some paleness. I've uploaded 4 images below. The first is at the corner of the tank without flash, the second is with flash, and the third + fourth are directly under my twinstar 900s light.

What temperature are you running the tank at?

Currently around 25C

I use very hard Cambridgeshire water with EI dosing and haven't noticed an issue like this.

I am admittedly confused, because I've read so many reports of people with harder water than me succeeding in growing healthy plants, yet I'm having major issues. Do you know what your dGH and dKH are?

I use aquasoil but it's a couple years old now so probably not a lot of inherent nutrients left there.

I do believe soils have a high CEC if I'm not mistaken? I think they also lower dKH? I initially went with fluorite when I was newer to the hobby and naive enough to believe Seachem's claims of any substantial CEC properties lol. I would definitely use soils in the future.

For your APF EI dosing, was that straight-up as in the instructions i.e. dose macros and micros on alternating days with a 50% weekly water change?

Yeah, for EI I've always dosed 3x macro 3x micro on alternate days, and a minimum of 50% water change each week.

Any other supplementation/treatment in the tank e.g. liquid carbon etc?

Nope, I do have it available, but I've just used it previously for spot treating black beard algae.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Do you know what your dGH and dKH are?

You can get figures from <"your water company">. Whatever <"your test kit says"> you will both have about 18 dGH and 18 dKH in your tap water <"for geological reasons">.

Basically you have a chalk (CaCO3) aquifer and some of that CaCO3 goes into solution as 1 : 1 dGH / dKH. The calculations are at <"Water Hardness">.

Map from <"Some handy facts about water">.

In terms of your plants it definitely looks like an iron (Fe) issue, pale, small new leaves. Because iron isn't mobile within the plant as soon as it isn't plant available
deficiency symptoms start to show. Have a look at <"Frogbit taken a turn">

cheers Darrel

 

[xZaiox]

Hi Darrel @dw1305 - my water report can be found here - https://cdn.southeastwater.co.uk/Files/Trosley.pdf it seems like they've combined the hardness measurements? (at the very bottom of the page) Either way, the number is high.
Do you know why my API test kit gives a dkH of 10 if the number is that much higher? I'm aware that this kit measures alkalinity and not the actual amount of carbonates, but to be off by that much is pretty shocking.

In terms of your plants it definitely looks like an iron (Fe) issue, pale, small new leaves

I'm unsure how to resolve this because as I wrote in the original post, I've dosed up to 1ppm weekly of various chelators. I'm guessing as @Hanuman said, this must surely be the plants not being able to access it, rather than not enough being present.

 

[G H Nelson]

Hi
I've used Seachem Flourite over a number of years its best as a long term substrate best used for Crypts/Vallis/Sag these plants seem to love it!
I would add root tablets/balls which contain Iron to the substrate.

 

[Andy Pierce]

Do you know why my API test kit gives a dkH of 10 if the number is that much higher? I'm aware that this kit measures alkalinity and not the actual amount of carbonates, but to be off by that much is pretty shocking.

I'm not a big fan of water testing in the general sense, but from time-to-time I use JBL 6 in 1 test strips and they consistently give dGH and dKH indications consistent with 18 for each as @dw1305 says. I'm not sure why you might be having an iron deficiency... maybe your frogbit grows so well it soaks it all up?

 

[MichaelJ]

I'm unsure how to resolve this because as I wrote in the original post, I've dosed up to 1ppm weekly of various chelators. I'm guessing as @Hanuman said, this must surely be the plants not being able to access it, rather than not enough being present.

Hi @xZaiox, There is always the possibility your plant issues are related to your CO2 application - inadequate distribution/flow, inconsistent dosing etc... I am not a CO2 user, but assuming all that is good, I'd say getting your water out the liquid rock territory and dialing down that pH to somewhere in the 6-7 range - before turning on CO2 - will make a big difference for uptake and bio availability of the fertilizers including Fe. Considering what Darrel said above about your water being 18 GH/KH regardless of what your test kit is saying, if you go RO you probably need to do 1/3rd Tap and 2/3rd RO (gets you to 6.0 GH/KH). With your 180 liter tank doing 50% WC weekly you need 60 liters of RO water per week. With a "cheap" 100 Gallon Per Day RO system running at a typical 80% production rate (depends on water temp and water pressure) it will take about 5 hours. With a higher end system you can get that down to a couple of hours.

On a side note: You can get away with excruciatingly small amounts of fertilizers (NPK and Fe included) if your water is very soft in both GH and KH terms and acidic. Anecdotally, in one of my own lightly stocked but densely planted soft water tanks (my so called lean experiment tank) 2 GH/~1KH/6.3 pH I dose Tropica Specialized targeting 1 ppm of N (getting a meager 0.055 ppm of Fe at the same time) once every 11-12 days when I change 35% water. It's been running great for some 9 months now. Granted, this is a low tech and somewhat experimental tank with mostly easy plants including tons of frogbit btw. Anyway, some day - hopefully - I will understand how and why this plant diet works

Cheers,
Michael

 

[G H Nelson]

@xZaiox
How old is the set-up?
Remove and check on the root system of the affected plants....sometimes these take a fair amount of time to get established in a immature Flourite substrate!

 

[xZaiox]

I've used Seachem Flourite over a number of years its best as a long term substrate best used for Crypts/Vallis/Sag these plants seem to love it!

Interestingly, I do have one crypt 'cryptocoryne undulatus red' that is doing fairly well.

maybe your frogbit grows so well it soaks it all up?

I would doubt this, I actually have only (fairly) recently added the frogbit. The issues long pre-date the addition of them, and haven't gotten worse either. I only added them from wanting to try out Darrel's duckweed/frogbit index.

There is always the possibility your plant issues are related to your CO2 application - inadequate distribution/flow, inconsistent dosing etc...

I have very strongly considered this - I've done plenty of research and have read many of Clive's @ceg4048 posts about this. He does seem to strongly advocate that structural abnormalities in plants are CO2 related, but I'm just really struggling to see how that can be possible in my case. My two drop checkers are yellow with a 1.5 pH drop. My fish breathe a bit faster at this current level, and if I increase it further then they'll shortly head to the surface. My distribution is surely okay since all leaves visibly move in the flow. I have also tried plantnoobdude's idea of taking cuttings from the plants doing badly and planting them right at the front where the flow is the highest, and seeing how they grow. Low and behold, no change at all. I've followed Zeus' advice on pH profiles and making sure the CO2 is stable within 0.1 pH from start to end of photoperiod.

I almost want it to be a CO2 issue, since that would be less work to fix than going RO/DI water, but I'm just not seeing how it can be CO2.

Considering what Darrel said above about your water being 18 GH/KH regardless of what your test kit is saying, if you go RO you probably need to do 1/3rd Tap and 2/3rd RO (gets you to 6.0 GH/KH). With your 180 liter tank doing 50% WC weekly you need 60 liters of RO water per week.

Thanks for this suggestion - looks good to me.

With a "cheap" 100 Gallon Per Day RO system running at a typical 80% production rate (depends on water temp and water pressure) it will take about 5 hours. With a higher end system you can get that down to a couple of hours.

Do people typically get one big container to fill up or do multiple small ones when using these systems? I'm wondering if they require much manual intervention or if they can just be left alone to do their thing.

Anecdotally, in one of my own lightly stocked but densely planted soft water tanks (my so called lean experiment tank) 2 GH/~1KH/6.3 pH I dose Tropica Specialized targeting 1 ppm of N (getting a meager 0.055 ppm of Fe at the same time) once every 11-12 days

That sounds crazy to me considering how much I've been dosing lol.

 

[xZaiox]

How old is the set-up?

The setup is a little over 1 year old now

Remove and check on the root system of the affected plants....sometimes these take a fair amount of time to get established in a immature Flourite substrate!

When these stems reach the top, I have been replanting them and occasionally removing the lower parts if they're unhealthy - the root systems seem okay to me. They don't rot or anything like that.

 

[G H Nelson]

I have saw crinkly leaves in the past on my Crypts!
I put this down to a fertilizer imbalance or too much fertilizers been accumulated in the water column, I stopped dosing ferts for a few weeks and did a few large water changes.
I removed the affected leaves....new fresh ones were normal when they appeared.

 

[MichaelJ]

Do people typically get one big container to fill up or do multiple small ones when using these systems? I'm wondering if they require much manual intervention or if they can just be left alone to do their thing.

I have a plastic drum for the RO production in my laundry room - 80 liters or so that sits next to a sink. When I make my water I just turn on the RO and set a timer on my phone so I remember to turn it off... if I forget, which happens occationally and it flows over it wont cause any damage as the water will just run down the drain in the sink. After I make the water I transfer it to 5.5 Gallon buckets for remineralization (and NPK depending on what tank the water goes into), before I add it to my tanks. Over time it has become a very easy process for me. The only small tedious part is the mixing of the minerals, but you wont have to do that since you're mixing with tap.

That sounds crazy to me considering how much I've been dosing lol.

Yes, but the large amounts of ferts could also be part of the issue... especially the proportionality between the individual compounds.

Cheers,
Michael