Wisteria

Alright- at work so still haven't taken some picture, but my thoughts have been drifting back to this plant and I have come up with some ideas to get it going in the right direction. The more I think about it, the more I realize that everything is really way out of balance. The plants not only lose their leaves along the stalk, but the base of the stems are prone to rot.

1. Cover the back and sides of the tank so that it does not receive sunlight through the windows. This way I can have a much better sense of the light that tank is receiving and can control it via the timer.

2. Finally pony up and get the CO2 system. The plants have done better at times that the DIY co2 was running properly; however, leaks and just the inconsistency of the approach has meant I may have a month with steady bubbles followed by weeks with nothing productive happening. But shhhh no one tell my boyfriend how much it will cost! I have a bottle of flourish excel on order so hopefully that will be a big help at least until I get the co2 regulator up and running. Realistically, that will take me a few weeks to research what I want, order it, and get it up and running.

3. Learn about nutrients and start dosing. I acquired a bottle for trace minerals at some point, but my sense is I will need to think about phosphates and others as well. Will need to do my research.


Also, confession: I totally planted the chain sword without removing the mineral wool. The guy at the LFS told me "oh just plant it and it will quickly spread." I literally did just that! Oof. It took months to start growing and six months to have it's first runner. I pulled it up this weekend, removed the mineral wool, and realized it's not one, but three plants (with one having a runner)! I replanted them in a row so hopefully now the plant will finally start to spread and fill in, especially when I make the steps I listed above.

Got some pictures

The set up


The sad wisteria


Java fern windelov (thanks Zapin for the ID)


Hygrophila corymbosa (thanks again Zapins for the ID)




Narrow leaf chain sword
Leaves were 3" but I trimmed and replanted, spreading out the three plants that were still in mineral wool.


Edit: I should add that the plant I don't have an ID on loses leaves regularly as well, although it seems to be pretty heart and continues to grow. Like the wisteria, the leaves are lost all along the stem and only remain at the top. These plants had grown to the top of the tank and I recently cut them and planted the top back down, making them appear better than I think they are actually doing.

Hmm, interesting photos. By the way to link photos in the future you just need to right click on the photo then paste it into the following text [IMG]PhotoLinkinHere[/IMG]

I think I see some tiny holes in the Hygro. corymbosa's older leaves in the photo below. This is usually a sign of potassium deficiency. Read more about it in hygro corymbosa here: http://deficiencyfinder.com/?page_id=641

Are you removing the older leaves on the stem plants and the wisteria? The damage on the leaves would be helpful to see in order to confirm potassium deficiency. Also, 4 hours of light is definitely on the shorter side of things. I'd say 7 hours should be minimum.

This is Java fern windelov not anubias.


This is Hygrophila corymbosa, the broad leaf kind.

Ah, thanks for the IDs!

As for the light, I was only doing 4 hours because the plants get direct sunlight pretty much all day. The sunlight makes it too hard for me to really get a good estimate of how much light there is. I used to run the light for ten hours and that's when the black hair algae emerged. I figure at this point I'll leave it as is until I can make all the changes at once. I have flourish excel on order, will be ordering dry ferts tonight per this formula, and will be building a pressurized CO2 system this month.

The potassium deficiency is entirely likely since I have never used ferts. Yes, the hygrophila does have holes in the leaves, although not quite as bad as it was a couple months ago. It's basically pinholes all over the leaves. I followed your link and that is exactly what happens to my hygro.

Btw, didn't link to the pics directly since I was posting a bunch at once. Didn't know the etiquette in this forum about linking to pictures, so thanks for that. I guess we all have high speed internet these days so it's not like the old forum days when some of us had dial up!

Makes sense to change one parameter at a time, so I will try to be patient as I do this. I do want to get the light on a more prescribed schedule so I'd like to get that fixed ASAP and then maybe start adding the potassium as soon as I get it in the mail.

Why is the KNO3 not sufficient for providing potassium? K2SO4 has twice the moral concentration of potassium so it would provide twice the potassium per mole of compound as the KNO3. But K2SO4 has almost twice the molar weight of KNO3 so it wouldn't matter if the chemicals were being weighed out gram for gram. The recipe in the link is by volume though so I'm not sure of stoichiometry. Or is there something advantageous to supplying sulfate as well? Sorry, drawing off my chemistry knowledge here without necessarily having an applied understanding of the way these chemicals are used by plants.

As for the soil, it was my intention with the dirt to not need to use fertilizers. I suppose it can't hurt to do the dosing in the thread mentioned above, but maybe once a week with potassium 3x for now. If anything, the added chemicals would prolong the available nutrients in the soil. I can't for the life of me remember what brand it is. I thought it was a home depot brand organic soil, but now I'm not finding that on their website. In any case, I did not mineralize it.

Malogna said:

Makes sense to change one parameter at a time, so I will try to be patient as I do this. I do want to get the light on a more prescribed schedule so I'd like to get that fixed ASAP and then maybe start adding the potassium as soon as I get it in the mail.

Click to expand...

Sounds good.

Malogna said:

Why is the KNO3 not sufficient for providing potassium? K2SO4 has twice the moral concentration of potassium so it would provide twice the potassium per mole of compound as the KNO3. But K2SO4 has almost twice the molar weight of KNO3 so it wouldn't matter if the chemicals were being weighed. The recipe in the link is by volume though so I'm not sure of stoichiometry. Or is there something advantageous to supplying sulfate as well? Sorry, drawing off my chemistry knowledge here without necessarily having an applied understanding of the way these chemicals are used by plants.

Click to expand...

While sulfate is also a necessary nutrient the benefit of using K2SO4 is that you dose potassium for "free." Sulfur generally doesn't cause issues if dosed in higher amounts. If you rely on KNO3 or KH2PO4 to supply the potassium you must be aware that you are also adding NO3 or PO4. I've seen in higher tech tanks potassium can run out if relying on KNO3 or KH2PO4. Perhaps not as much of an issue in low tech tanks but still the option to dose potassium independently of the other macro nutrients is beneficial.

Malogna said:

As for the soil, it was my intention with the dirt to not need to use fertilizers. I suppose it can't hurt to do the dosing in the thread mentioned above, but maybe once a week with potassium 3x for now. If anything, the added chemicals would prolong the available nutrients in the soil. I can't for the life of me remember what brand it is. I thought it was a home depot brand organic soil, but now I'm not finding that on their website. In any case, I did not mineralize it.

Click to expand...

Yes you shouldn't have to use ferts with soil. Sometimes if you use pure RO water it will strip nutrients out of the soil over time and you'll need to replace these nutrients by dosing or new soil. Other times if you mineralize soil it will reduce the amount of nutrients in the soil and they run out a little sooner. Sometimes newly setup soil will not provide enough of either potassium, nitrogen or iron. This new soil phenomenon tends to go away after a few weeks and the soil becomes capable of supporting plants. Perhaps it is just the plants switching to root mode over absorbing all nutrients from the stem and leaves? Or perhaps the soil is just "maturing" or the bacterial populations in it changing over from land to aquatic types.

How long ago did you set the tank up with the soil?