Please Help My Plants Are Growing Funny

Hi
yes i am also dosing

Macros
25g Potassium Nitrate
2.2g Potassium Phosphate (monobasic)
22g Potassium Sulphate
16g Magnesium Sulphate Heptahydrate (Epsom Salts)
500 ml distilled water

15 ml of NPK and 8 ml Trace

i do this everyday

Forgive me for forgetting your setup.

If you have a drop checker you can keep going up with CO2 (in small increments) until it goes a Limeade colour. Best to start this first thing in the day so you can keep checking on it during the whole of the day. This also assumes that you are running with a solenoid at night.

If you are running 24/7 then you can keep upping until you get to a grass green colour (It will get to Limeade by the next morning)

If you are running DIY CO2 then you can't really up it without buying more kits and on a heavily planted tank you need at least 1 per 70Ltrs and this will still not overdose CO2 even with the worlds best diffusor!!

If you are already Limead/Green then I wouldn't bother with upping it at all. You are already on the money.

You are dosing all the correct ingredients so I would leave them alone and just give the plants time to recover properly. Remove all dmaged leaves on sight and then wait for the new healthy growth to appear. In the space of a couple of weeks you will probably have no old growth left and all new and healthy but it does take time and algae WILL continue until there are enough healthy leaves with no deteriating leaves leaching ammonia.

Hope that reassures you

That's ok Andy. but don't let it happen again i have been looking around some of the other forums and what I'm finding is that there are a lot of people out there that are dosing this

Potassium Nitrate
Potassium Phosphate (monobasic)
Potassium Sulphate
Magnesium Sulphate Heptahydrate (Epsom Salts)
Calcium

Now i am dosing all the above. but NOT Calcium. so i am now starting to think that Calcium is the missing link. i do have a low GH from the tap. its only 2. but when i tested for it in the tank it was only 1 .so maybe the plants are using it all up. by the time i do my weekly water change it might have all ran out and that why my plants are growing funny

UK tap contains plenty of Magnesium and Calcium alongside (in my area anyway) nitrate and phosphate.

Remember that most planted forums are dominated by US scapers and their water regulations are far in excess of ours. In some cases they are pushing for nitrate to be totally eliminated from the water.

I wouldn't worry about calcium too much. We only add Magnesium because some areas have all calcium and not much Mg but i've not heard of it being the other way round.

Andy

Thanks Mate. and heres me thinking i had cracked it .

Hi
i was wondering if its possible that the ferts i am using have gone off. i got them from A.E about a year ago. maybe this could be why i have deficiencies in my plants . my plants give off bubbles but they don't seem to be growing and the algae problem seems to be getting a little worse. i remove as much as i can by pulling it off but its back again the next day.
Link to the ferts i am using
http/www.aquaessentials.co.uk/index.php?...products_id=546

Thanks Guys

they shouldn't ever go off if they are kept isolated from anything else.

Are they still powder?

Andy

Hi
yes its still powder. a few people here have said that the reason my cabomba was bending was because it was receiving enough light. a few days ago i cut off a straight piece of the plant. about 3 inches long. after about 2 days it started to bend. now i some how cant see it was a light problem as this cutting was only 3 inches high and it should have been trying to reach the light. but its just growing bent. so the only thing i can put this all down to is the Trace. so

1 its gone off
2 is not a very good Trace
3 i need to up the dose yet again.

The only way to rule the problem out would be to get hold of something like seachem flourish and try that. the good thing about the seachem flourish is it also has calcium in it. so this would also rule out my other problem of having a very low GH. or maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.

You can try it. I use Tropica Plant Nutrition (Normal Not +) as my trace. Flourish will do just the same.

Andy

i might give it a go. should i dose the same as my old trace 8ml a day. or should i dose as to what it says on the Flourish bottle which is DIRECTIONS: Use 1 capful (5 mL) for each 250 L (60 gallons*) once or twice a week.

You should ignore the instructions really. They are very 'averaged' amounts.

Its impossible for them to know how much a tank will need for every 250 litres because 1 tank may have 1WPG and need less than another which is 4WPG.

I would dose double what it says on the bottle per week but divide the weekly dosage into days. i.e. if it works out at 14ml per week then dose 2ml per day

Andy

Sounds like a good plan

Hi All
some more updated pictures. as you can see things are not getting any better. i feel like I'm going around in circles. if i clean all of the algae off that you see now it will be all back again by tomorrow before the lights go off. this is really doing my head in. one thing I'm not sure about is say i where using to many ferts in the tank will this cause algae ? what I'm trying to say is this algae growing at the speed it is because i am dosing to much. i just don't no where to go from here. maybe plastic

pic 2

pic 3

pic 4

Too many ferts will not cause algae as long as the plants are doing well. Poor CO2 can contribute in this problem!!

I have to say from your pics it looks awfully bright. Are you using all the tubes again?

As for ferts I think we can assume it is not your ferts that are causing the defficiency and therefore must be CO2 related. I would guess if your DC is showing green then it must be circulation issues in that the CO2 is moving around the tank but not as well as it should!!!

Plants can be a frustrating thing and I had problems like yours for a long time but when you finally get it all to work it is amazing.

I still battle with algae occasionally but it is normally due to me lacking in the cleaning or water changing or another lack of maintenance related issue.

Andy

Hi Andy

still on 3 tubes. 2 T5s and 1 T8 (146 wats) as for circulation i have one powerhead that does 1750L per hour and another filter that does 1250L per hour so im thinking that should be ok. both filters are cleaned every week when i do my 50% water change . im not sure whats going wrong with it. my sister in law got 4 Tiger Lotus bulbs and give 2 to me. that was over a week ago. hers has grown a few small leaves but mine has one very small one that is very hard to see. and she is only using two T8 tubes that she has had in the tank for about 3 years.