Myriophyllum mattogrossense starving

[reefaddict]

Ciao from Italy, I have a 3 months running 45P - 35 liters highly planted tank, lit by a 39W chihiros WRGB @ 70% for 8 hours plus ramp-up/down. I have a Dennerle scaper's flow as a filter with plenty of Seachem matrix as media.
CO2 is kept as steady as possible at around 25-30 mg/L curing to keep high gas exchange and high dosing simultaneously, CO2 checker is almost lime green steadily, I add ADA protocol (that means K, micros and Nitrate, no iron) plus additional KNO3 and sparingly P
Water values are as follows: temp. 26 °C, GH 7, KH 4,5, pH 7,15 early morning to 6,9 during daylight, NO3 around 1-2 (yes, adding lots of KNO3), PO4 undetectable (but no clear signs of deficiency like GSA), K 10, Mg 8, Fe undetectable (but again, beautiful colored sprouts, no evident sign of deficiencies).

Well, given all that I'm very happy with 99% of my plants thriving and requiring weekly pruning. I have a beatiful green HC cuba carpet, Rotala wallichii growing like mad, some Crypts, Bolbitis, mosses, Staurogyne repens, and Alternanthera reinekii "mini" too.

The only "steady" plant is Myriophyllum mattogrossense at the far left. My thoughts: light is over 200 uM PAR on top of the Mm, so this shouldn't be an issue. CO2 levels are supposed to be ok. N and P are always low but I do add a lot given the very very fast uptake and no other plant shows signs of deficiencies.

Another hint: I'm fighting with some GDA these days, am I running really so low on nutrients?

Any suggestions? Do I have to add even more N and P to feed this hungry plant? Will more N be enough? And more intriguing: do I have to trust those NO3 test kits (used Salifert, JBL)?

TIA, Alessandro

 

[zozo]

What you actually have is the "Myriophyllum tuberculatum" that is widely sold in the shops as "M. mattogrossense" and true M. mattogrossense is rather green instead and doesn't turn red leaves, but redish stems.

The M. tuberculatum is known to be an extremely difficult plant to cultivate and it requires very strong light. I'm not sure how nurseries cultivate this plant, but what i notice this plant is generally only available during the summer period. I suspect they grow it outdoors or in greenhouses at very sunny spots.

Maybe this description helps you improve it.
https://www.flowgrow.de/db/aquaticplants/myriophyllum-tuberculatum
💪

Could be you have a mix of both, Tropica is so far i found the only one selling the true M. mattogrossense.
https://tropica.com/en/plants/plantdetails/Myriophyllummattogrossense(037)/4454

 

[reefaddict]

What you actually have is the "Myriophyllum tuberculatum"

Thank you Marcel, but you're probably not watching the perfectly green plants on the left, just under the lily pipe. It' s definitely mattogrossense, because it comes from in vitro culture hortilab

Forgot to say that during the first 2 months the growth was good, I had NO3- around 10 mg/L. What is happening right now is that the growth is definitely stunted and I don't know if NO3- are to blame given the good growth of all the rest.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Growth looks pretty good.

add ADA protocol (that means K, micros and Nitrate, no iron) plus additional KNO3 and sparingly P
Water values are as follows: temp. 26 °C, GH 7, KH 4,5, pH 7,15 early morning to 6,9 during daylight, NO3 around 1-2 (yes, adding lots of KNO3), PO4 undetectable (but no clear signs of deficiency like GSA), K 10, Mg 8, Fe undetectable (but again, beautiful colored sprouts, no evident sign of deficiencies).

Try a <"complete fertiliser mix"> and see if things improve. It is really <"difficult to diagnose deficiencies"> and you have a <"lot of possible variables">.

Personally I don't tend to<"buy branded fertilisers">, once an ion is in solution it doesn't matter where it came from.

cheers Darrel

 

[zozo]

Thank you Marcel, but you're probably not watching the perfectly green plants on the left

I did, that's why I thought you might have 2 different Myriophyllum sp. For the rest, I did only quote the literature (I also provided the database link to it, with complete requirment discription.) about this plant that states that the true M. mattogrossense doesn't grow red leaves and the red one actually is M. tuberculatum, but erroneously sold as M.m

Could be your specimen proofs all botanists who did ID this as incorrect... Happens quite a lot with plant ID's. Equally a lot as LFS selling wrongly ID't plants... I rather leave the Yes/No debates to the professional botanists...

Maybe best to simply not argue with the label... Then it is what it is...

I did try this plant a few years back, but wasn't realy succesfull...

 

[reefaddict]

Personally I don't tend to<"buy branded fertilisers">, once an ion is in solution it doesn't matter where it came from.

I agree. I'm coming from reef aquaria (see my nick) and it's 20+ years I keep doing my own additives for seawater.
But since I'm new to freshwater aquascaping I was feeling uncomfortable in the beginning.
I think time has come to buy some raw chemicals again
Thank you for the useful links!
Alessandro

 

[soham]

By looking at the health of some of the older leaves, it seems to me there is phosphate deficiency in the tank. You can try adding 0.1 ppm of phosphate everyday and see if it makes any difference. Please remember that adding phosphate would speed up uptake of other nutrients as well. So keep any eye on nitrate as well.

 

[reefaddict]

For those who may be interested: it was a phosphate deficiency, now everything seems ok.
I'll take my mattogrossense as low phosphate indicator plant in the future.

I also had good result controlling the GDA outbreak: too much light (I reduced to about 100 micromoles PAR on the carpet, 130 on tips of mattogrossense) and too long a photoperiod. Reducing the light and adding more nutrients solved the problem pretty quickly. I think many new LED lights are way too strong for most of our tanks given you don't want to kill fish with CO2 or dump buckets of ferts.