Lack of phosphates or microelements? - reduced plant growth

[Kravcu]

Hi,
Currently I'm dealing with reduced plant growth in my tank.
Here is its spec:
60x30x36cm
3-4L Osmocote soil for balcony plants, 10L of gravel 1-3mm
2x24w Philips 865 T5
HW-302 - sponge, ceramics, bio-balls,
CO2 2 b/sec

Current fertilising:
Daily:
1,5ppm NO3
0,12ppm PO4
3ppm K
5ml AZOO Carbon Plus

Water ph 7,2 kh 7 gH- not measured
I haven't measured levels of NO3, and PO4 but I can do it if you need it.


The tank is about 2-3 weeks old, I don't have any algae at the moment.

Some of the plants are nicely green - hemianthus callitrichoides, staurogyne repens, blyxa japonica, but they haven't grown much since I planted them.
Hydrocotyle japan and rotala red are growing pretty nice, but rotala is almost green- only edges of leafs are a little bit orange.

Can someone tell me what does the plants need to start growing?
I'm guessing that I should start dosing microelements, am I right?
Should I add some root caps ferts under plants?

Thanks for your help.

 

[ian_m]

1. No issue dosing micro's on alternate days to NKP.
2. Sometimes the plants can take weeks to adapt to their new environment, before they start growing, especially if they are grown emmersed. I planted loads of Glosso, grown emmersed, and it took a week or two before it started taking off, including loss of leaves lower down.

 

[Puntius]

You are dosing to little NPK and you also need to dose trace mix (micros) get csm +b plantex for traces.
http://www.ukaps.org/index.php?page=dosing-with-dry-salts


New plants do take a while for it to settle in nicely, patience is very important in a planted tank 🙂

Good luck