Rotala Rotundifolia - Growth Issues

[dw1305]

Hi all,

mentioned in his post above that all traces bar one or two are affected by hard water. I knew Iron could be a problem but I wasn't aware there were others.

Macro-nutrient deficiencies are usually caused by low levels of CO2, N, P or K, most micro-nutrient deficiencies are caused by the ratio of elements, rather than actual amounts.

These pH and nutrient availability curves are for soils, but because plants can only take up nutrients as ions (so in aqueous solution), they also apply to aquatic situations.



Plants that naturally come from alkaline water (with high levels of dGH and dKH) can make use of bicarbonate (HCO3-) as their carbon source and can sequester scarce PO4---, Fe+++ ions etc. Against that they may be unable to deal with high levels Fe++ or Al+++ ions, or use trace levels of Ca++ or Mg++ ions etc.

The opposite applies for plants that grow only in soft, acid waters, they may be too efficient at sequestering Ca++ ions etc and they can lead to problems with Mg++, Fe++ etc. uptake.

Most popular aquarium plants lie somewhere in the middle and can live in both soft and hard waters.

cheers Darrel

 

[AndreiD]

My tank is 180ltrs, taking the thickness of the glass away, minus 30+ kg of rocks, minus about 20ltrs of soil leaves me with about 130ltrs of water Possibly even less as tank ain't full . My dose of Ei was always calculated for 150ltr. And sometimes on top of that I was dosing even 4ml of easy life - never got rid of stunted growths. The question is, how much Iron would I have dose then to get rid of them?
.

I'm dosing 4 ml of EL Ferro and 2 ml EL profito in my 64 liter tank .

So i think you were not adding enough micros / FE. As Sciencefiction said don't be afraid to dose more micros / Fe .

 

[Konrad Michalski]

Ok, so another few days have passed. I've been keep playing with my rotalas and not to be happy to early but eventually it looks nearly as I wanted it too look. Now when the shape is about there (no stunted growths, leaves up) I will be trying to put some colour on it. That's how it looks for now, a day before water change. It's just pearling like crazy.

 

[sciencefiction]

I've been keep playing with my rotalas and not to be happy to early but eventually it looks nearly as I wanted it too look.

It looks really good!

Any details of how you have achieved it? 🙂 I am sure a lot here would love to know..

 

[Konrad Michalski]

It looks really good!

Any details of how you have achieved it? 🙂 I am sure a lot here would love to know..

I can't really take better picture right now as I'm too lazy to pull out my dslr but it looks much better in the tank than on the photo.
I have not done anything unusual, just general things we spoke about in the thread. I have a big delivery of rotalas coming from Poland and that should change the look of it. The only trouble is they've bin in the post since Monday and they had temperature like -7 at night so not sure if anything survived. I will get it Sunday or Monday so a week in the box + cold

 

[Michal550]

you said you mixing your tap with ro. what is your KH and GH now?

 

[AndreiD]

Please let us know how much and what are you dosing . I'm curious 🙂
Thanks

 

[Konrad Michalski]

you said you mixing your tap with ro. what is your KH and GH now?

KH about 6-7 GH 12-13
I can't really lower it down as tank is filled up with rocks.

 

[Konrad Michalski]

Please let us know how much and what are you dosing . I'm curious 🙂
Thanks

I use Ferka fertilizers and not sure what they contain. To be honest I received more of rotalas from my brother and when I looked of what he sent me mine are still rubbish 🙁 knowing it is the same plant and looking so much different it just make me feel bad. I'm starting to lose my hope again.

 

[AndreiD]

Can you do water tests ? NO3 PO4 and Fe ?

 

[Konrad Michalski]

Can you do water tests ? NO3 PO4 and Fe ?

I could do it for you but it just make not much sense now. PO4 is about 0.5ppm but I will be increasing it to about 1.5ppm.
Apparently Fe gets dissolved and lights break it so the test won't show the correct result no matter what as it won't stay in the water for long. If I test it the morning the readout will vary completely from if I did it evening time. And in the fertilizers I have got Nitrate apparently comes in the NH4NO3 form which my test don't show up. But my readout was 15ppm so I reckon it is about 30ppm. I will be trying to reduce it to between 5-10ppm and see how plants will respond. As it is Christmas/Holiday time I don't want to mess about too much and leave the tank on its own. Also on Sunday I applied loads of tablets for the substrate which in theory won't add nothing to the water column, which is false info. My water parameters has changed already and rotalas became green right away so I know Nitrates are up.

 

[Konrad Michalski]

Another 2 weeks are gone and things are getting even better but I'm still not happy with my rotalas appearance. They only look good when their leaves are being lifted by the oxygen while pearling. Unfortunately they start pearling about 5 hours after light are on, which means that for the first 5 hours all leaves are wide open, pointing more downwards than upwards 🙁
Also I decided to double check and brought my potassium from 15 to 20 ppm. Guess what happened? (Yeep, stunted growths on some plants - I immediately stopped dosing potassium and we will see what's going to happen?
And a few photos to show what's going on:

 

[Michal550]

I'm having similar problems with my Rotala and getting fed up with it. The only time my rotala looked good was when I went on 2,5 weeks holiday and left it without any ferts but at the same time other plants suffered.

 

[cookie.dou]

Interesting read so far - my rotala didn't start off great but it's changed so much from when I first started. The leaves are very thin and colouring up - I dose NPK in the following ratio for a ~22G tank - 1mL : 5mL : 10mL every week and am not experiencing anymore issues. I also keep my TDS around 150-200 using salty shrimp GH+ (for the shrimp), some equilibrium for micros as well as 2mL of Iron and some neutral regulator to help keep the pH steady. With more light it becomes much more pink/red as well and with less it started losing its colour. I use 2x Finnex 24/7 Planted+ LEDs.

I don't know of potassium is actually the issue... The only thing I noticed that's weird is the way it's growing. Despite having adequate light it likes to kind of curl 😵.. Instead of growing straight up.

I will take a closer photo when I get home later! But for now you can see a full tank shot below:

 

[cookie.dou]

And here's a quick photo from my phone of the top - with my dosing regime (which varies week to week...)

 

[Konrad Michalski]

And here's a quick photo from my phone of the top - with my dosing regime (which varies week to week...)

Thanks for joining the conversation. I'm not 100% sure but Rotala on your pictures doesn't look like Rotala Rotundifolia. More likely that's Rotala Colorata or other uncommon form. As we know for fact they have thin and log leaves and get pink/red a lot easier than Rotala Rotundifolia. I think that they got slightly pinkish colour as they definitely suffer lack of nutrients. Loads of leaves on the photo have transparent holes/stains and some plants are nearly white in colour. I would be thinking about dosing more nitrate but I'm sure someone will give you better advice.

 

[cookie.dou]

Thanks for the feedback, what I also noticed was that some stems grew better than the others and this round was much better. I think my next test will be to lower potassium and add more nitrates as I have green dust algae which may be from excess potassium?... But the weird thing is when I add more potassium the transparency will disappear overnight. I wonder if adjusting these quantities will actually work...

I think there are two variations in here and I think the pinkish one is actually rotundifolia. The stems under didn't have a good chance to grow until I added an additional light. The LED cone dispersion didn't seem too great - but with an LED right above that area I am hoping for "straighter" growth. Odd thing is when lights are off, they all point upright. When I bought the original stems (potted Tropica plant) at the LFS they were more round, but they ended up being a lot thinner after a while in my tanks.

I am about to do a full trim and see again how it looks and will update again with my new tests!

 

[Konrad Michalski]

Thanks for the feedback, what I also noticed was that some stems grew better than the others and this round was much better. I think my next test will be to lower potassium and add more nitrates as I have green dust algae which may be from excess potassium?... But the weird thing is when I add more potassium the transparency will disappear overnight. I wonder if adjusting these quantities will actually work...

I think there are two variations in here and I think the pinkish one is actually rotundifolia. The stems under didn't have a good chance to grow until I added an additional light. The LED cone dispersion didn't seem too great - but with an LED right above that area I am hoping for "straighter" growth. Odd thing is when lights are off, they all point upright. When I bought the original stems (potted Tropica plant) at the LFS they were more round, but they ended up being a lot thinner after a while in my tanks.

I am about to do a full trim and see again how it looks and will update again with my new tests!

I have never heard that potassium could be responsible for green dust. In case of them paper white leaves I don't think it's anything to do with potassium neither. I would dose more Iron but if you think that potassium sorts the problem out so quickly why not increasing the doses? I had same sort of chlorosis on my monte carlo and increasing nitrates level sorted the thing out after about two weeks.

 

[Mick.Dk]

Just info:
When growing side-by-side, the Rotala sp. 'Colorata' have clearly longer leaves, longer internodes and more "powerfull" stems, then the Tropica version of Rotala rotundifolia.
The Rotala sp. 'Colorata' also show deeper and more "full" colouration of red/orange/pink colour in leaves and especially in stems, then Tropica version of Rotala rotundifolia, when growing side-by-side.
Both types perform better (colour-wise) in high light conditions, added pressurised CO2 and preferably water in the "soft'er" end of spectre, then in "hard'er" end of spectre.
The "arching" growth-habit occur in both, but are more dominant on the 'Colorata'. The "arching" growth-habit seem to be somewhat related to light intensity and nutrient levels.

 

[cookie.dou]

Ahh, thanks for that. Based on what you said it looks like I bought colorata... And I guess the arching and twisted growth is somewhat normal...


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