Weekly update. Lots of pics, but all resized to less than 0.5Mb
Plant updates
I manage to stunt all my
Pantanals with all the funny stuff I'm doing (Yes I know Pantanals are a plant that love EI and I don't dose EI) so the crowns have stopped growing but several rather red sideshoots have popped up. Lets hope its an adjustment to the Starxcote....
Side photo of the
L.Sphaerocarpa shows its current state where it has shed all its bottom leaves. If you look closely, there is a new sideshoot which is sort of exciting... as the sideshoot might be better 'adapted' to the tank conditions and maybe not shed as much? And note that it is next to the
Wallichii and
Florida, which should provide 'early warning' of CO2 problems, which is why I'm treating this as a mobile nutrient problem and hope the Starxcote will help.
And speaking of the
Wallichii - the stem is pretty red, but the leaves are not turning pink yet... will continue to work on this.
New Plants
Removed: I removed the very nice
Eriocaulon Vietnam, split it, and replanted some of them in my low tech tank. I also removed the
L. Super Red - while it was a beautiful red, it doesn't grow very straight and the stems keep on getting tangled. So I guess its time to try something new. I have plenty of them growing emersed though.
Added: I went to my LFS and they had another new Ammannia on sale,
A. Senegalensis. After being inspired by the Rotala Kill Tank thread in Barr Report, any unusual and reasonably priced Lythraceae is on my buy list! Sticking with the theme, I also picked up
R. Macandra 'Narrow Leaf'.
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Osmocote Journal
As I posted in another thread, I discovered a Masters thesis where the release pattern of Osmocote in water was studied - it was revealed that there is a big 'dump' of nutrients in the first two weeks and then a drop to a lower level. This suggested to me that I should put in a little osmocote weekly to 'smooth out' the 2 week spike
17 Nov: First round of Starxcote (Osmocote clone) added. Small amount individually inserted with tweezers next to the 'difficult' plants.
24 Nov: Second round of Starxcote added added.
Observations:
- Nitrate Test (for what it's worth) shows the same colour as pre-Osmocote, TDS readings are also around the same.
- No algae blooms. Usual GDA to scrape off the glass (as some photos show, I need to scrape more thoroughly...)