I only seem to be able to keep the top 3"-4" of my Anacharis green and fluffy, the old growth gets thin and transparent and then falls off the stem. My Dwarf Sag. new growth is coming in fairly quickly but is a much lighter, almost bleached green compared to the old growth on them from the time of purchase at the LFS. Are these symptoms of any particular deficiency? Thanks.

Id say lack of CO2

I use a drop checker with 4 deg reference solution, it runs borderline yellow all day. Very frustrating....

How about nutrients and light?

There is more to life than CO2.

Bill

This is true there is also chocolate cake

I hade the same problems. Gasping fish due to excessive CO2 and excessive ferts killing shrimp and snails.

I changed from 0.95 watt/litres economy bulbs (< 30 uE/sec/m2) and dying plants and bad pearling to 0.8 watt/litres T5 lights with super-reflectors (>120 uE/sec/m2) sporting champange pearling even from HC at the bottom.

If should have kept the economy bulbs but have built some kind of super reflectors I would have gotten from 30 to around 50-60. If I just would have changed the bulbs to real good ones like T5 Triton/Aquarelle but no reflectors i would have gotten from 30 to around 80..

80-100 seems like the magic number for good growth and good pearling from most plants. Far below that you will have serious trouble getting anything to work despite fish killing CO2-levels.

RlxdN10sity, with your tank-measurments and type of bulbs and wattages and reflectors I can give you an estimate of your PUR-levels at different depths if you want to..

Defdac, that range of light is pretty much ideal(100micromols), but seldom used here in the USA sadly.....they have the more is better attitude, thus have more issues with good CO2 for a given light level.

While that might seem bad, and generally might be argued so, it has helped to understand the CO2 issue much more by pushing things to the limit and finding better management methods to deal with it.


Regards,
Tom Barr

Thanks Defdac, I really appreciate the offer. My tank is a 55gallon with approximately 10 gallons displaced by substrate and biomass. Substrate is 100% fluorite. 95% coverage with microsword, the rest of the plants are anacharis, pond penny, red sword, anthera and some rotala. I run two banks of light 130watts each for total of 260watts of power compact fluorescent. Lights run together for 10.5 hours a day with one bank coming on and going off 1.5 hour before and after the other bank for total photo period of 13.5 hours. The reflector in the light hood appears to be a high polish stainless or aluminum. I do not know exactly but it came with the light hood. I dose trace and macros daily througout the week for total of 2.25 tsp KNO3, 1/2 tsp KH2PO4, 30ml Flourish, 20ml Seachem Iron. I do 50%-70% water change every Sunday without fail. I have been on the verge of switching over to T5 lighting for quite some time now because the color spectrum I want is not available in the power compact fluorescents. But I have been trying to hold off until I get the plants growing right. But if switching to T5 is what I need to do to get things running nice and smooth I'll do it today. Thanks again....