What kind of deficiency?

[silicagel]

When the leaves of some plants are sort of "wrinkled"(like paper after it's been wet once and dried) and weak looking, yet coloration is good and growth is normal. ???

[Wö£fëñxXx]

What is your tank spec's and dosing regime?

[Buck]

You sure its not normal for the plant type? It would also help to know what kind of plant is doing it.

[silicagel]

tropic sunset and microsword are having issues, and at one time i had problems with an amazon sword

[silicagel]

Just thought I'd bump this since I didn't get much of a response.

My plants have seemingly good color, but the leaves are "crinkly" and the stems appear weak and thin. Almost every plant I've added was stout and had good form, initially, but with the new growth in my tank it's just not quite as nice looking. There is a lot of new growth, though. My pigmy chain sword is, of course, taking over the tank--but it's not quite as frail looking, for some reason, as ,for instance, my microsword, anacharis and tropic sunset. I also have dwarfhair grass in the tank but it looks okay, despite a lack of new growth in the brightest section of the tank.

I have a 2.5 gallon with a 9w 6700k corelife CF bulb and a 1.5" substrate, laterite at the bottom, TMS above it and some plain washed gravel at the very top. I really didn't know much about substrates at the time, so this was my attempt to keep the laterite from fogging up the water too much and the plain gravel is used to help anchor plants. I give the tank a small dose of straight flourish every few days and I depend on food for nitrates and phosphates.

[ThomE]

Distorted leaf growth
cupped leaves
twisted and bent leaves
twisted and short roots
Damage and die off of growing points
Yellowish leaf edges

Does that sound right? If it is, it's calcium

I stole that from Chuck's website . Great source of info

Hope that helps

[silicagel]

It's definitely a little twisted and distorted looking, but I don't see any die-off. The only thing that looks even remotely possible on that list is iron, and my substrate has a laterite base which is, primarily, an iron substance.

I've looked at that list and a similar list from the krib, but nothing really matched the deficiency I'm having issues with. If it IS iron, I can only guess the iron in the laterite isn't available yet for some reason.

[rayhwong]

It sounds like calcium deficiency. I dose with turbo calcium available at most petstores. You can find CaCl as ice melter too at HD. I couldnt find it here at my local stores. I induced Ca deficiency by dosing a higher amount of potassium. Once I bumped up teh Ca the plants were growing again.

[rwong2k]

that's exactly what happened to my tank recently
i started dosing K then afterwards the sunset hugro and sword's new leaf would crumple up, started dosing calcium , i guess my bag of coral rock isn't helping

[shalu]

Originally Posted by rayhwong

You can find CaCl as ice melter too at HD. I couldnt find it here at my local stores.

Yep. I had to mail order from the east coast, shipping is twice as much as the product.

BTW, Ray, do you have softwater? K does not make much difference with my harder water.