Stems Rotting Dead Center

[csmith]

I'm not sure how/why this is happening, but I know someone here will. I'd think I was doing everything right as I think I'm actually overdoing it. For some reason I'm having an on-going drama with my stems. I'm experiencing continued death two days after a huge water change and a heavy pruning of everything that was dying. Some stems don't even have leaves left, but I kept them because they have good looking offshoots that will probably be ready to trim come next Saturday. The glosso on the left isn't doing too much, but it's a fairly new addition so it probably needs time to root. There is some vertical growth.

Tank:
20 Gallon Tall. No Visible Algae.

Lighting:
2x24 T-5HO suspended 10 inches above tank and 24 total inches from substrate.

Substrate:
Onyx Sand/Worm Castings capped by Onyx Sand.

Flora:
7-10 L. arcuata
6 M. aquaticum
Newly Planted Glosso
2 H. Kompakt
2 C. Wendtii
1 H. Polysperma

Fauna:
1 Lonely Otto
2 Japonicas and 2 Pinnochio Shrimp deceased within the same 24 hour period, within 1 inch of each other.

CO2:
On one hour before lights with DC a very dark yellow when lights on. Seeing as all of my shrimp died I figured I'd go for broke. Diffused through needle wheel modified mini-jet 404.

Ferts: Liquid Dosing
12 mL Macro on Sun, Tues, Thurs (58.7g KNO3, 5.2g KH2PO4, 26.4g K2SO4 and 25 mL Excel in 900 mL solution)
12 mL Micro on Mon, Wed, Fri (82.1g MgSO4.7H2O, 13.8 CSM+B and 25 mL Excel in 900 mL solution)

Filtration:
Eheim Liberty 150. Yes Tug, I know it's underpowered . I have no livestock left other than 1 otto, so I didn't want to ditch the filter when all it does is mechanical.

Flow:
Liberty is turned full blast, mini-jet 404 that diffuses CO2 from left to right and 2 Maxi-Jet 404's (106 gph each) located on back glass and pointed diagonally towards the opposite corners of the tank on a wave timer. The 404's are located high enough on the glass to cause a bit of a ripple on the water's surface. I know the flow moves around well, as I have to replant stems 5-6 times a day and when I disturb the sand the powder goes flying around.

Unknown: GH/KH and no local tap water report.

Showing flow setup.


Leaves (or whatever they're called, fronds perhaps?) dying.


This one (short one on the right side of the picture) is rotting right in the center of the stem. It's now hunched over and probably going to break apart.


Just a cluster of death. Everything that looks yellow and brown is yellow and brown.

[Tug]

Get More Plants!



Single dose for a 20 gallon water column, more or less.
6.34 ppm Nitrate
0.64 ppm Phosphate (try adding 1.6ppm)
2.09 ppm Potassium (from K2SO4)
1.43 ppm Magnesium
0.1587 ppm Fe

Slow Motion Drag Racing

[Gerryd]

Hi,

Are you using Prime or a de-chlorinator each WC?

I would suggest the following:

Buy a lot more plants. Hygrophila, rotala, bacopa, sag, val are all fast growers and should do well.

Is that your c02 outlet underneath the powerhead on the left wall? If so, you may want to push it into the powerhead intake itself.....the c02 bubbles may be getting blown away before they enter this pump. You may also want to modify the impeller to improve performance and chop the c02 better.

Hang in there. These things take time...

[nipat]

I think you should have continued all of this in one thread. I had to go back to a thread to see your
tank size, still don't know what you use as substrate and your water parameters; basically NH4, GH,
KH, (Cu etc., also nice to know).

Normally, plants (or even a strand of plant) should be still OK if they are in plain water and
get enough light. But all of this happens to you within 5-6 days, very quick. I suspect there is
something wrong in the water, or something leaching from the substrate. Are critters in the
tank OK? Does the water smell like rotten eggs ?

[csmith]

Get More Plants!

6.34 ppm Nitrate
0.64 ppm Phosphate (try adding 1.6ppm)
2.09 ppm Potassium
1.43 ppm Magnesium
0.1587 ppm Fe

Do you have any problem with GSA?
What are the Ca and Mg levels from your tap?
Slow Motion Drag Racing

I had more. I started with 3 bunches of L. arcuata and 2 of M. aquaticum but they've slowly wilted away. That's why I have the bare stems in there with shoots growing off, I was hoping they'd save me the effort/money. I'll pick up more, though. The only algae I've seen in this tank was one tiny, barely visible spot on the top of the drop checker. Other than that, nothing. I'm not sure what my tap levels are for anything, Colorado Springs doesn't like to add too much information to their water reports.

[csmith]

Hi,

Are you using Prime or a de-chlorinator each WC?

I would suggest the following:

Buy a lot more plants. Hygrophila, rotala, bacopa, sag, val are all fast growers and should do well.

Is that your c02 outlet underneath the powerhead on the left wall? If so, you may want to push it into the powerhead intake itself.....the c02 bubbles may be getting blown away before they enter this pump. You may also want to modify the impeller to improve performance and chop the c02 better.

Hang in there. These things take time...

I use Prime at every weekly water change. As said before I'll get more plants. Gah, I hate stems right now. I've had to shove a stem back into the substrate 17 times today. I don't even have 17 stems left in this tank. I've gone at angles, planted 2 inches deep and they still pop out. The powerhead is modified, and no CO2 that I know of escapes but I'll move the tube closer.
Time is what I'm afraid of, things have gone bad in no time at all..

[csmith]

I think you should have continued all of this in one thread. I had to go back to a thread to see your
tank size, still don't know what you use as substrate and your water parameters; basically NH4, GH,
KH, (Cu etc., also nice to know).

Normally, plants (or even a strand of plant) should be still OK if they are in plain water and
get enough light. But all of this happens to you within 5-6 days, very quick. I suspect there is
something wrong in the water, or something leaching from the substrate. Are critters in the
tank OK? Does the water smell like rotten eggs ?

You're right, I should have kept this to one thread, just came across different issues at different times and I wasn't sure they were connected. Sorry, as with the parameters listed on first post it's a 20 gallon tall with Onyx Sand/worm castings capped with onyx sand. I don't know GH/KH but I use GH buffer. (All of this additional info added to first post.) I have no livestock other than my otto. My two japonicas died last week, probably due to whatever is going on here. I bought two "pinnochio" shrimp and one was found dead on a powerhead but the other died by the next day. Actually the japonicas were found dead within an inch of the dead pinnochio, but they made it an extra day.
The only odd thing thus far is one day my tank smelled like a freshly paved road. Yeah, I know it's weird. I did two water changes in the next two days and things seemed to get better. Well, smell wise anyway.

[Philosophos]

The re-planting stress shouldn't do that. The center melting isn't what you'd expect to see from any column-wide toxicity, but it does look like a whole lot of auto-fragging for propagation as a stress reaction. Not 100% certain on that, but my experience matches with it.

I hate to bang an old drum, but it's probably a CO2:Light thing at the root, and the rest is just reaction to the stress because conditions are sub-optimal. Besides the center melt, I'm seeing a huge difference in internodal spacing, leaf shed from bottom to top, and CO2 going in horizontally up high. You may want to find a fan-like attachment for the powerheads and put them down a little lower, rolling across the substrate. Lighting is hard to tell; not my department. 10 inches is a ways up though, and that lid probably deflects a lot of light so it may be a matter of more CO2 above all else. It looks like the plant is fighting for the surface; competition behavior n' such to get more CO2 when it reaches the surface to match the provided light demand before ROS causes full blown melt. When/if it does I'll be the plant will shed off every leaf but those near the very top. If you let a few do this at the same time, the plant would probably carpet.

Just my guess from carpet-forming stems and watching plants fail in my own tank for a while.

Unless I'm off my game for ferts (and presuming you've got a 20 gal with we'll say 10% displacement), you're dosing about this per week for macros:

NO3: 37.89
PO4: 3.82
K+: 37.94

No deficiency. Eyeballing the micros, I'd say there's no way you're deficient there either. If I'm off by volume, just divide 68.4 by the volume of your column in L then multiply by the nutrient concentrations.

[scottward]

I'm thinking CO2 issue as well. My plants would autofragment like this (i.e. rot at the bottom and float up) when my CO2 was off.

Could you push your mini-jet 404 all the way to the bottom of the tank and connect a spray bar to the output that runs the length of the tank? You would then be diffusing the CO2 enriched water right at the bottom of the tank.

Without any livestock in the tank, why not crank up the CO2 so that the spray bar is churning out a constant stream of bubbles and give it a week or 2 to observer the result? I think this will do the trick. Then you could wind back the CO2 a little and hopefully keep things ticking over at a nice safe level.

My $0.02.

Scott.

[Tug]

Thats a lot of onyx sand. I am not sure if it is an issue. It will likely raise your KH and some plants might have a problem with it. Sorry if I can't remember which ones. The stuff does look like what I've used to patch asphalt in the past. There could be some time between now and when it mellows.

CO2?
Please, try modifying a Duetto DJ 100 multi filter, or follow any of the others' suggestions for modifying your mini-jet. I wish someone would try this Duetto modification. I'm tempted to mail a spare I have in a box to anyone that does. For you, I might even throw in a bag of Barr's GH booster. I don't need it with my tap water.

I think Gerry said it best, improving CO2 injection is worth every penny.

P.S. I have asked Dan to correct the weekly dosing numbers he gave. I believe he based his calculations using 500ml as the stock solution, not 900. You should be alright with your dosing for now, until you get some more plants. If your not having a problem with GSA there might be a lot of phosphate in the tap water already. So, you must be good for PO4 as well.

Cheers,