Needing help - certain plants melting, others not growing

**vinlo** · 03-09-2012, 08:53 PM

You don't think the photoperiod is too long? Cut is back to 8 hours maybe?

I guess cleaning the filter and either turning up the bubble counter or cleaning the atomizer is in order? Or perhaps I should revert to my DIY inline diffuser that I use for 8 years?

**vinlo** · 03-10-2012, 04:14 PM

So I cleaned out the filter and the inline atomizer. The flow appears to be up a bit, and the CO2 mist is much finer now. I guess we'll see where this gets me. Aside from the PH/Kh which appearantly is useless for me how can I gauge how much CO2 is in the water? My current plan is to turn it up high until the fish stress and then turn it down a bit. Seems like there should be a better way?

**dutchy** · 03-10-2012, 07:01 PM

Fish could do it, but some fish can tolerate very high CO2 levels. Shrimp are more sensitive to CO2, when they want to climb out of the tank, you need to back off just a little. But this is just half of it. Good dispersion is the other one.

**vinlo** · 03-10-2012, 07:36 PM

Been really watching the tank today. It seems as though there is more CO2 in the water. Damaged ends pearling (which has not happened in a while), bubbles on the undersides of leaves - not sure if these are really signs or not, but it seems like things are in the right direction. Also, when I shut the filter down you can see a stream of bubbles going up the tubing - which I don't recall seeing in the past. Lastly, the mist coming out of the outlet is much more fine that it has been in the past - lots of micro bubbles in the tank. I put a drop checker on the far end of the tank to see what it would read also - lime green (with new fluid in it). Also did a 50% change today too. Will start dosing according to EI today.

**Tom Barr** · 03-13-2012, 07:56 AM

In general, you see CO2 issues and a positive response in 1-2 days if....and only if the CO2 is now in a good range.............if not, then the CO2 is still poor etc, you will not see a positive response.

I see folks adding more CO2 and think they have MORE than enough etc......
They don't.

Others just lose patience and add too much and gas their fish.
Lots of hollering on various forms about fert balance, but few seem to get the CO2 balance.

**vinlo** · 03-13-2012, 01:36 PM

Thanks for the feedback. It's been 2 full days now (and a bit) and I think I see positive results - it's hard to not focus on the bad older growth. The Ludwiga repens is opening up more and leaves are much larger. Hottonia Palustris appears to have better growth and larger more vibrant new leaves and the 50% of the Luwiga Brevipes has new (and what appears to be normal) growth coming out. Does it take longer for more damaged plants to come around? For example one Ludwiga Brevipes looks perfect, while other are just starting to have normal growth.

Didn't gas out the fish, but I think the CO2 is proper - or at least much closer to proper now.

Now I just have to figure out how to get the little 1" pieces of Limophillia to grow into longer pieces so I can plant them in the substrate. They are currently floating and growing albeit very densely between nodes.

I follow the concept of a limited aquarium - in this case CO2. It makes sense to me, just hard to change the ways I have thought for the past 8 years where wrong fert balance = algae and poor growth. In the end, I will obviously defer to the people on this forum and continue my current path and know that if I keep the ferts where they are at and get the CO2 in order everything will work - just takes a bit of time.

**dutchy** · 03-13-2012, 01:45 PM

Bigger leaves are a good sign. Some plants take longer to adapt than others, sometimes up to two weeks. You can try to put the plantlets in the substrate with tweezers. As long as they are flush with the substrate they will still grow.

**vinlo** · 03-13-2012, 05:02 PM

What about the string/thread algae? Manually remove as there is not very much and it will go away over time as things equalize?

**dutchy** · 03-13-2012, 07:29 PM

This algae is almost a plant so it can be very stubborn. Manual removal is a part of the trick and enough patience. Eventually it will give up. You can also do some big waterchanges, like 80% twice per week, this also helps.

**vinlo** · 04-14-2012, 11:28 PM

Well it has been about a month since I had my issues. Everything has come around, until this week. I have notice that all plants are doing good and growth this week has seems to really take off. This being said, I have noticed 2 things - the hottonia pallustris seems to turning yellow at the lower stems (only stem showing any signs of problems), and there has been a very high growth of green dust algae on the glass (and a little bit of string/hair algae but nothing remotely close to troublesome). To get the plants to grow a bit more (and healthier), I turned the CO2 up a bit last week or so (maybe why such good growth), but have not increased EI dosing at all (1/8tsp KH2PO4, 1/4tsp KNO3 and 1/8tsp K2So4).

I was wondering if these things I am experiencing could be from a fert. imbalance - namely nitrogen? I seem to recall someone here explaining that when they ran their N low, they noticed an increase is green dust. Also, I have read an N deficiency can show itself by way of leaf melt at the bottom end of the stem.

As a different question, I am getting a new canister filter next week and was wondering what the method to introduce it is? I am planning on just using the same media in the new one and slowly changing in new for old over the course of a couple months. Sound about right?