Brown leaves on Bacopa & Sword

As the title suggests, my Bacopa Monniera (not entirely sure on its exact name) and Amazon Sword have some brown discolouration on some of their leaves and I'm not entirely sure why. I've attached a couple of photos although it's not very clear in the photo of the sword.

These plants are in a 40 litre tank in pretty hard water (My pH is around 8.0-8.2). I've been dosing EasyLife's liquid CO2 every morning for about a month now, and this has helped a lot with keeping the plants alive. The lights in the tank are on for around 13 hours a day. My Bacopa has lost a lot of leaves towards the bottom of the plant, and at the top they just don't look as healthy as they should be. However, it is still growing and has got a lot taller since I bought it last month. The brownness isn’t algae, the leaves have just turned a brown/reddish colour. I'm not regularly dosing any other fertiliser at the moment apart from root tabs for my Sword, but I've just bought a bottle of EasyLife's ProFito fertiliser in case this is the solution to this problem.

So, does anyone have any advice as to what the cause of this brown discolouration could be. Lack of nutrients? Too much light?

Thanks

back2thelotus said:

My Bacopa has lost a lot of leaves towards the bottom of the plant, and at the top they just don't look as healthy as they should be. However, it is still growing and has got a lot taller since I bought it last month. The brownness isn’t algae, the leaves have just turned a brown/reddish colour. I'm not regularly dosing any other fertiliser at the moment apart from root tabs for my Sword, but I've just bought a bottle of EasyLife's ProFito fertiliser in case this is the solution to this problem.

Click to expand...

When the older leaves die and the plant still grows from the top, That is often an indication of a mobile nutrient deficiency. What is happening is that the plant is removing nutrients from the older leaves to support new growth. Plants can only removed the following nutrients from older leaves. Nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, phosphate chloride, and molybdenum. When one or more of these nutrients are removed from a leaf the leaf dies. Note plant do need chlorine to grow and they typically get it from Chloride salts such as potassium chloride or magnesium chloride which are safe in an aquarium. Chlorine gas or Chloramine however are dangerous to plants and fish

The liquid CO2 is probably not helping as much as you think. In my experience CO2 often isn't the issue with plants. What is really your problem is a fertilizer. Plant need nitrogen, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphate, sulfur., chlorine, iron, manganese, boron zinc, copper, and molybdenum. if any one if missing your plants will not grow or will die. And algae loves nutrient deficiencies. Try your fertilize and see if that helps. also check your GH which measures only Calcium and magnesium if you water is soft you may have to increase GH with a GH booster. Note most fertilizers on the market don't have calcium and most don't have enough magnesium so your fertilizer probably will not resolve a Ca or Mg deficiency. Also verify your nitrate levels are not zero. Plants need the nitrate. 5ppm of NO3 should be OK.

I personally have no experience with Easylife. but I have found that TNC fertilizer is a very close match to the nutrients levels that work in my tank. So you might want to try TNC if Easylife doesn't work well.

StevenF said:

When the older leaves die and the plant still grows from the top, That is often an indication of a mobile nutrient deficiency. What is happening is that the plant is removing nutrients from the older leaves to support new growth. Plants can only removed the following nutrients from older leaves. Nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, phosphate chloride, and molybdenum. When one or more of these nutrients are removed from a leaf the leaf dies. Note plant do need chlorine to grow and they typically get it from Chloride salts such as potassium chloride or magnesium chloride which are safe in an aquarium. Chlorine gas or Chloramine however are dangerous to plants and fish

The liquid CO2 is probably not helping as much as you think. In my experience CO2 often isn't the issue with plants. What is really your problem is a fertilizer. Plant need nitrogen, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphate, sulfur., chlorine, iron, manganese, boron zinc, copper, and molybdenum. if any one if missing your plants will not grow or will die. And algae loves nutrient deficiencies. Try your fertilize and see if that helps. also check your GH which measures only Calcium and magnesium if you water is soft you may have to increase GH with a GH booster. Note most fertilizers on the market don't have calcium and most don't have enough magnesium so your fertilizer probably will not resolve a Ca or Mg deficiency. Also verify your nitrate levels are not zero. Plants need the nitrate. 5ppm of NO3 should be OK.

I personally have no experience with Easylife. but I have found that TNC fertilizer is a very close match to the nutrients levels that work in my tank. So you might want to try TNC if Easylife doesn't work well.

Click to expand...

This is very useful, thank you for taking the time to write this! I have very hard water so I’ll rule out a calcium or magnesium deficiency for now, and my nitrates are reading 10ppm at the moment. It seems like I definitely need to start regularly dosing the tank with a fertiliser. The EasyLife is coming this week so fingers crossed that does the trick.

Iron- made for aquariums and for short order algae killing maybe some Peroxide on the leaves. Right now doesn't seem needed really...Swords are huge iron eaters,Bacopa can be a fast grower also.

Stan510 said:

Iron- made for aquariums and for short order algae killing maybe some Peroxide on the leaves. Right now doesn't seem needed really...Swords are huge iron eaters,Bacopa can be a fast grower also.

Click to expand...

OP, sorry to hijack your thread for a moment! But hoping @Stan510 can solve a mystery for me.

@Stan510 Any clue why my hygrophilia siamensis 53b is developing holes in the leaves now? It used to be healthy, I'm using the same ferts (TNC root plugs and TetraMin liquid ferts) and the other plants are still doing fine, not developing holes like this (second photo). I have siamensis in two areas of the tank, one with more light, and both get the holes. Holes mainly on the older leaves, and the leaves drop off. The holes started to happen when my Malaysian Trumpet Snail population exploded - could they be eating the plants? Or is this a deficiency?

ETA help if I included the photos!
The rest of the tank:


Siamensis;

Probably a lack of potassium. That and iron seem to be the only nutrients that food,fish waste,and tap water never seem to have or replenished as the other major needs are more than available from fish feeding.
Hygro's are especially needy of potassium.

But!..those holes don't have a yellow ring..so that could be snail damage.
Not to confuse you,but photos sometimes don't show all.

Stan510 said:

Probably a lack of potassium. That and iron seem to be the only nutrients that food,fish waste,and tap water never seem to have or replenished as the other major needs are more than available from fish feeding.
Hygro's are especially needy of potassium.

But!..those holes don't have a yellow ring..so that could be snail damage.
Not to confuse you,but photos sometimes don't show all.

Click to expand...

I can look into finding a potassium supplement and see if it helps!
I'm already sifting the sand and removing a lot of snails. It's not easy to control their population since there are shrimp and cories in that tank, so need to feed the bottom feeders, and the snails grab it too. Maybe I should start clearing an area of snails, then try to affix a larger wafer in that spot, so the cories and shrimp can't drag it away from that spot. I'll bait some more snails with some courgette and remove some more!

Thanks for the help

I don't think snails eat healthy leaf matter, and so if you didn't have snails in the tank, those holes would show as translucent (melt). Snails just clean up any dead plant matter. It'll be deficiency of something.. I'd give iron a go. I grabbed some tnc iron about a month ago and dose that once per week alongside daily tnc complete dosing. The iron seems to have given all the plants an overall boost.
Do you dose ferts daily or weekly @AdoraBelle Dearheart ?

mbsqw1d said:

I don't think snails eat healthy leaf matter, and so if you didn't have snails in the tank, those holes would show as translucent (melt). Snails just clean up any dead plant matter. It'll be deficiency of something.. I'd give iron a go. I grabbed some tnc iron about a month ago and dose that once per week alongside daily tnc complete dosing. The iron seems to have given all the plants an overall boost.
Do you dose ferts daily or weekly @AdoraBelle Dearheart ?

Click to expand...

I dose ferts when I remember to... which is, um, not as often as I should be...

It looks like something eating the leaves of the Hygrophila. Snails, suckermouth catfish and even normal fish will pick at and chew on leaves.

I have four healthy young Clown Loaches and a near 6" Queen Botia..and an hour after the lights are out? One billion of those sand snails are out and covering my Java Moss especially for some reason. Tiny,tiny, cone snails of some type.
Now,Ram's horns are long gone and occasional pond snail shows up somehow.
The point is those kind of snails are going to be there unless you nuke them.
Now,after all that...they don't seem to cause any real damage and they sure don't eat algae either. I would guess they love detritus and fish poop and rotting leaves.

Stan510 said:

Probably a lack of potassium.

Click to expand...

Can't be Potassium. according to this nutrient calculator which has TNC fertilizer as a selectable option. TNC has more potassium in it than nitrogen. about 6 time more. Plants consume more nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen than anthing else. Add in potassium, from fish food and wasteland whatever is in your tap water it is in my opinion very unliekly.

However according to the fertilizer calculator there is no calcium, sulfur, and chloride. If your bottle doesn't have it assume it is deficient. Calcium can cause some unwanted reactions between the ingredients in the bottle so most fertilizers leave it out. But you Tap water should have that. Check your tap water and aquarium water GH. Sulfur and chloride are often ignored although plants do need them. TNC may actually have sulfur and chloride but those are often ignored on analysis labels. if someone should send me the ingredient listed on the TNC bottle I could tell.

I had a lot of problems with plants in my RO water and eventually just made my own fertilizer customized to my needs and balanced to about match the needs of the average plant. It works very well. TNC is a very close match to my fertilizer according to the nutrient calculator. But it is not available in the US.. But I ran into one issue that may explain the holes in the plants.

It could be a molybdenum deficiency. Like most fertilizers I used sodium molybdate as the source of Mo. But I found it reacted to other ingredients in the fertilizer and that rendered it inert in my fertilizer. and it resulted in holes in leaves like your are seeing. I solved the problem by dosing Mo separately. This deficiency hit my Anubias very hard but not my other plants.

Lately look closely at the plant. All the holes are in the older leaves. Sometime when a nutrient is scars plants will strip nutrients from older leaves and use those nutrients to support new growth. It is called a mobile nutrient deficiency . fortunately for use the only mobile nutrients are nitrogen, potassium, magnesium. phosphate, Chloride, and Molybdenum. From what I have see on other posts a phosphate deficiency doesn't look like what you have.. A nitrogen deficiency also results in yellowish leaves which doesn't appear to the the case. So I would recommend focusing on magnesium, calcium (GH) and then chloride and molybdenum.

Could be your photoperiod is too long. If all else seems well....trying reducing the hours the lights are on.