phosphate deficiency

[ceg4048]

My only argument against this is with all the water changes, tank cleaning, shrimps nibbles, fish. Over time the leaves and plants are going to get damaged.
The plant will need enough light to grow at a rate faster than this damage occurs or it will slowly die.

The origin of failure with aquatic plants is the inability to determine just how much light is is "enough". Folks are programmed from the beginning to use OTT lighting, and so do far more damage than shrimp can ever dream of doing.

I would like my carpet of Monte Carlo to grow a bit faster, not because it's not looking healthy but just because I'm impatient.

Well, yes I understand that. All I can say is that watching grass grow....requires patience....

Cheers,

 

[rusticdr]

Hi.. Nice looking tank. I had exactly the same issues as you do and polysperma was one of the plants involved. After a lot of help from this forum (special thanks to Clive) I first tried increasing co2 to the max (which resulted in two of my best rainbows dying). Not much changed and I was then thinking of nutrient toxicity bcos i was dosing EI and max levels of flourish and iron (even switched to EDTA iron). I was getting helpless as nothing seemed to work. But then.. there was one post i read regarding phosphates.. regarding how someone in here used higher levels of phosphates when compared to EI and it brought success. I then stopped taking measurements of phosphates and nitrates with the api test kits which always hindered me from adding anything. I increased the phosphates by 4 times the EI recommended dose along with a mild increase in nitrates. It immediately showed a difference. Plants which were dying started to flourish. Now they are much better although I had to remove all my polysperma (by the way polypsperma is a weed - so better to do away with it) to make way for bacopa. I have actually dialled down the co2 to sane levels after this. I havent posted back the results as I am still figuring out stuff and i want to narrate everything once i am convinced that what i did or am doing is correct. I am not sure how hard water makes a difference regarding bioavailability of other minerals (I did have 300 to 400 ppm TDS). All that I am saying is that sometimes it can be multifactorial.. You can try increasing the dose of phosphates first.. then if that doesnt work dial up CO2 with high phosphates.. if that doesnt work.. we can look at other areas. One thing that really helped me were the floaters.. frogbits.. They r an excellent indicator of whats wrong. They used to get brown and develop holes (older leaves) and finally they would get small and disappear. I always used to argue that since the frogbits showed the same deficiency signs as plants inside it cant be co2 alone. And i was right. it wasnt water movement that killed them. It was deficency. Once I increased my dosing they have flourished and I am discarding a large bunch once every 3 days so that they dont block the light. Now that shows that NOT all structural failures are a co2 issue. There can be other things too. Maybe (just speculation) high TDS interferes with phosphate or other nutrient uptake and we need to add more. We just wont know until we try. So please keep us posted. I am close to understanding what my tank needs and will post full updates soon.
All said and done.. from the way your tank looks I think u r doing most things right. So you are in a much better position than I was.

 

[Barbara Turner]

Hey All

Just an update,

I increased both the Micro and Macro by 1/3 .
There are still a few holes but there now hard to spot, rather than on all the old leaves.

I'm not completely certain this was the fix as Aponogeton Crispus has had a growth spurt and blocking out some of the light to the Hygrophilia Polysperma slowing its growth down.

One thing that really helped me were the floaters.

Visually I'm not the biggest fan of floating plants in aquariums
Playing devils advocate the floaters will also drop light levels, decrease growth and reduce co2 and nutrients demand.