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40 Breeder Dutchy High Tech + Low Tech Tanks

Freshflora

Member
Joined
20 Apr 2022
Messages
73
Location
Los Angeles, CA, US
Hey all. I've decided to start a journal here after lurking on the forum for a little while now and utilizing the awesome IFC calculator. UKAPS seems like a great community, and I'm looking forward to documenting and sharing my progress here. This will mainly be for my 40 breeder high tech tank, but I also have a few low tech tanks that I'll share updates on occasionally.

Here is my 40 breeder:

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And here is all the info on it (thanks @GreggZ for the spreadsheet format):
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Here are two of my other low tech tanks too:

16 gallon Pea Puffer tank


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5 gallon bloody mary shrimp tank
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More to follow soon!
 
So here's what I'm dealing with right now.

I have had some weird plant health issues going on for the last 3 months or so since just before switching to dry ferts, so I decided to pretty much restart most of the plants in the tank and vacuum the substrate pretty thoroughly at least in the areas where plants seemed to be having problems. I also did two back to back 50% water changes to semi-reset the water column. This tank and the substrate are now over 2 years old, so it makes sense if at least part of my problems were due to a dirty substrate. I also decided to dose EI levels to rule out any possible deficiencies.

Moreover, I realized recently after finding some PAR data online that after upgrading my Chihiros WRGB II to a Week Aqua Pandora P and running it at 100% for more than a month, that I was probably pushing 300+ par at the substrate. So I lowered the lighting to 60% for 4 hours and 70% for 2 hours. I was just able to measure the PAR yesterday and my suspicions were correct, because at 60% I was still getting around 100 PAR in the corners and around 170 in the middle at the substrate. Until I don't have any weird plant health issues and my plant mass gets larger, I don't plan on pushing PAR beyond 120-130 in these corners to help lower CO2 and nutrient demand and competition.

One of the main plant health related issues I'm trying to fix are the curling leaves on my ludwigia meta:

Plant Botany Terrestrial plant Organism Flower



They are growing really nicely--the best I have grown them since I got them around April--but I want to see if I can straighten out at least the top ½-⅓ of their leaves. After speaking to some folks, I decided to raise my weekly PO4 from 3 to 5.2 and lower my K on the presumption it may be a mobile nutrient issue since the tops look nice. My K was at 37 because I was adding around 7ppm with potassium bicarbonate to my RO, which I stopped adding Saturday and brought my K down to 30.

I thought that meta was both a bit easier to grow and more colorful than Pantanal. However, Marian Sterian just recently posted something about Meta being less colorful, so I ordered some Pantanal to grow next to the Meta for comparison.

Mermaid weed has also pretty much always had some issues, so I moved it away from the right corner of the tank to a more high flow area and replanted the tops of the best three plants and left their stumps to propagate some more. So far, the three tops have been growing really well, and I can see new plants coming off the stumps. In the past, at least one of my mermaid stems has eventually stunted and then died. Often when I've uprooted the stunting stem, the base of the stem has been black with no roots, so it could also have been related to my substrate being dirty. But I've also been successful at propagating new stems off a base and then lost the new plant after cutting it off the base and replanting, so I think they haven't been totally happy nutrient wise either.

Plant Leaf Purple Terrestrial plant Vegetation


Two of my other problem children have been syngonanthus manaus and bacopa salzmannii sg.

I got syngonanthus manaus over a month ago around June 1st, and it pretty much just sat in my tank until this last weekend. Part of me thinks that it may have been grown emersed, but I'm not totally sure. I finally messed with it last weekend and took out as much bad looking growth as possible, vacuumed the substrate around it thoroughly, and replanted the healthy looking tops. So far it looks decently promising, but I may replace it with something because I'm feeling impatient lol.

Plant Houseplant Terrestrial plant Vegetation Organism



The bacopa had seriously messed up lower leaves (necrotic patches?) before switching to EI as well. The new growth on it looks nice too, but I also may replace it or restart it with a new batch because it's a slower grower and I'm not totally loving it where it is. I've been surprised how light of a shade of purple it is in my tank.

Plant Flower Purple Terrestrial plant Grass


This is how it looked a bit over a month ago for comparison:

Flower Plant Purple Petal Houseplant


This is the end of my first week with 20:5.2:30 and .5 Fe. I plan on continuing the dosing for another week at least and then taking things from there.
 
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One of the main plant health related issues I'm trying to fix are the curling leaves on my ludwigia meta:

Plant Botany Terrestrial plant Organism Flower



They are growing really nicely--the best I have grown them since I got them around April--but I want to see if I can straighten out at least the top ½-⅓ of their leaves. After speaking to some folks, I decided to raise my weekly PO4 from 3 to 5.2 and lower my K on the presumption it may be a mobile nutrient issue since the tops look nice. My K was at 37 because I was adding around 7ppm with potassium bicarbonate to my RO, which I stopped adding Saturday and brought my K down to 30.

I thought that meta was both a bit easier to grow and more colorful than Pantanal. However, Marian Sterian just recently posted something about Meta being less colorful, so I ordered some Pantanal to grow next to the Meta for comparison.

Nice. As I have a similarly sized 90P, I'm getting all sorts of ideas from this journal what plants will do nicely in a 90P :cool:
I have Pantanals next to Metas but after a few trims and replanting of sideshoots, I am no long able to keep track of which is which.
have you had occasional stunting problems when you had to rip out a big stem with nice root system and replant it? sometimes I get a Pantanal which gets angry when I do that and stunts....? Hopefully this is less of a problem with Meta.

I had similar issues with B.Salzmannii Purple/SG on the lower leaves. I think it was compounded by the fact that once the lower leaves started getting worse, the cherry shrimp seemed to be eating them (they were constantly on the Bacopa, maybe they were scraping some biofilm off but probably made the leaves worse). When I moved them to my new tank (with lower leaves in terrible condition), they seemed much happier in my new tank but I can't pin point any particular reason.
 
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Nice. As I have a similarly sized 90P, I'm getting all sorts of ideas from this journal what plants will do nicely in a 90P :cool:
I have Pantanals next to Metas but after a few trims and replanting of sideshoots, I am no long able to keep track of which is which.
have you had occasional stunting problems when you had to rip out a big stem with nice root system and replant it? sometimes I get a Pantanal which gets angry when I do that and stunts....? Hopefully this is less of a problem with Meta.

I had similar issues with B.Salzmannii Purple/SG on the lower leaves. I think it was compounded by the fact that once the lower leaves started getting worse, the cherry shrimp seemed to be eating them (they were constantly on the Bacopa, maybe they were scraping some biofilm off but probably made the leaves worse). When I moved them to my new tank (with lower leaves in terrible condition), they seemed much happier in my new tank but I can't pin point any particular reason.
Sweet, glad to help spur some ideas :).

The short answer to your question is yes definitely, that’s happened to me since I started growing Meta. But, most likely if they have trouble being replanted they are not completely happy to begin with. I believe more stem plants are more resilient to being replanted vs just being trimmed like a hedge.

This was the first week I was able to replant all of my meta as tops and didn’t lose any since I started growing it in April for what it’s worth lol.

That’s good to know about bacopa. I have definitely noticed that some of my fish like to take bites of out it too (I think the cherry barbs), so it may be one of those plants like AR and Downoi that can be tasty to certain species even when it doesn’t have deteriorating leaves.
 
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Wassup. So here is how the tank was looking Sunday:

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Typically this is how my maintenance goes for those who are interested:
1) Squeeze out pre filter sponges from my Oase into a bucket of dechlorinated tap water.
2) Prime the filter and purge the reactor of any air. Typically this will cause a good amount of biofilm gunk from the filter tubes to fly into the tank, so that is why I do this before I do the water change and pruning so I can get as much of that gunk out as possible.
4) Clean the glass with a razor blade if I need to. When things are good, I don't need to do this often. Lately I have had a bit of GSA on the glass because I was running too high of light without a high enough level of biomass I believe. I will also take a white laminated card and scrape the front of the glass in between the substrate and the glass.
3) Prune all the plants. I try to top and replant as much as possible because that maintains more healthy biomass in the tank than topping would and typically looks better. I will go from the tallest plants/background to the shortest/foreground, making sure to skim each area I uproot plants from with my gravel vacuum.
4) I do 50-60 percent water changes. While vacuuming around the tank, I use my hands and a turkey baster to fluff the plants and get any gunk off the top part of the soil and the plants. I keep the filter running to get any gunk in the water column for as long as possible until the water gets too low.
5) Refill the tank, and while it's refilling I will empty/clean out the skimmer. I typically will then empty it out one more time the next day to clear any plant leaves and gunk it picked out from the water column after the water change/trimming.

Up until the June, I was doing two weekly water changes. The second weekly water change is always a lot quicker because it requires no trimming. I noticed my tank looks/does significantly better with two weekly water changes as opposed to one, in part I bet because I have a large fish load. Also, I uproot a lot, and larger/more water changes are always better in a high tank when that is the case. In June, I switched two once week because of a change/increase in my work hours, but I decided last week to go back to twice a week, so this was my second week doing two water changes. Before June, I would normally do the second water change a couple days later, but since last week I've just decided to do the second water change the next day, so I did my second water change on Monday.

Here's a nifty water change shot from yesterday's (Monday) water change/the second one:
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So here is exactly what has been happening to at least one of my mermaid weed stems for the last several months. The more colorful stem that I showed in the last picture didn't make it. This is what it looked like before the water change on Sunday:

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As promised, no roots and black lower stem (starting to rot?):

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The other two tops and the new stems coming off the stems look really good, so we'll see what happens to them.
There are two other plants I want to show off. The first is buce brownie blue 2011, which I got off a facebook auction a bit over a week ago. My first really rare buce, looking forward to propagating it.
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The bit of green you see on two of the leaves is just iridescence, not algae :). Although the driftwood behind it does have algae lol.
The second is what was sold to me as hygrophila sp. brown:

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After doing some research, I believe it is actually hygrophila polysperma 'tropica sunset'/ rosanervig. Pretty sweet plant. It can lean a bit/creep, but so far it has been manageable with good trimming.

Here is how the tank looks now. I switched the light spectrum a bit because the substrate was looking a bit overly purple. Curious on anyone's opinion regarding the two light spectrums:

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Also did a little bit of some trimming and a 40-50% water change on my shrimp tank. This tank was set up at the end of February and has been the smoothest first couple of months I've had on a tank so far. This was my 6th tank/time since starting the hobby in 2019:
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Here is how it looked when I flooded it for reference (I moved that large buce on the wood shortly after and replaced it with fissidens moss:

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This is my first shrimp tank. I started with 12 bloody mary shrimp, and I have at least 20 now. It took them at least 2 or 3 months to start breeding, but once they started it doesn't seem like they've stopped :D. I get about 50 par on the bottom of the tank. I dose this tank once a week with APT Complete that I already had from before I switched to dry ferts on my high tech tank. I'm planning to just use dry ferts on it and my other low tech tanks too once I run out though.

On the topic of nutrients, for my high tech tank this is the latest. I'm going to lower my potassium down from 30 K to 22 K. Also, I'm going to go with at least a double dose of macros after my water change to introduce a bit more stability to the water column/move closer to more traditional EI rather than the daily EI I did for the last two weeks. I'm also going to switch my micro dosing a bit. I was daily dosing, but I have a sneaking suspicion my tank might do better with at least one higher dose, so I'm going to do at least a double dose after each of my water changes for them too. I might then do 2 more double doses during the rest of the week for a total of 3 doses daily like traditional EI or wait a day after the double dose and then dose daily. I'm leaning towards the former. I'll stick with whatever changes I make for at least three weeks this time to fully observe how all the plants do before changing anything else and make sure that I give them time to adjust before jumping to any conclusions.

New plants coming too. I ordered some rotala macrandra mini to replace the bacopa salzmanii sg, some downoi, and some variegated water wisteria/hygrophila difformis. I tried to grow downoi like a year ago when I had a good amount of amano shrimp, and they devoured it before it could convert. I figured I would try again now that I don't have amano shrimp with some that is already grown submersed to give myself an even higher chance of success.
 
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Things are growing in a bit more and adjusting to the change in ferts/dosing. Ended up dosing very close to standard EI. 22:5:22 (NO3: PO4 :K) and 0.6 Fe. Dosing one dose of micros and macros after the first water change, and three doses of micros and macros after the second before the next week's water changes. So each dose is 0.2 Fe and 7.34:1.67:7:34 of macros.

Inside of the glass before maintenance this week was looking nice and clean--always a good sign.

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Current FTS:

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New plants:

Rotala Macrandra Mini (type 4?):

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Variegated water wisteria/hygrophila difformis:

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That angle shows how sloppy my background job is :/. From the front it looks totally fine, but clearly there are a lot of air bubbles. May try and redo it, but the location of the tank makes accessing the back pretty difficult.

Downoi:

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Arrived in pretty rough shape. Two of the 3's leaves completely came off. The stumps have healthy roots though, so I'm going to give them 2ish weeks to show some signs of life and go from there.

2 Pantanal stems to the left of the Meta:

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Tips look good. They were all curled up when I first put them into the tank and have settled in nicely so far.

Regarding other plants, here's what's going on. Mermaid Weed:

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The stem in front looks really nice, only thing I'm not sure about is that the stem seems possibly a bit thin. We'll see how it grows. One of the shoots on the stump in the back puckered up a bit, which I'm pretty sure happened right after the change in dosing.

New leaf on the buce looks nice, very iridescent.

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I think in a couple weeks I'll split it into two different plants.

Seeing something weird on the Rotala Blood Red SG though that I haven't really seen before. I've been growing it for over a year now, and it's always been pretty darn bulletproof. If anyone can provide some guidance on what the patches I'm seeing on it are that would be very much appreciated. I don't know if I'm just noticing it now because I've been paying more attention or what.

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Moving forward: currently thinking about swapping out my old stratum for some new landen. Also ordered some bacopa colorata.
 
Plant health is fairly close to 100% right now, so pretty happy with how the tank is looking in the 3rd week of dosing close to standard EI.

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I do three doses which add up to 22:5:22. a 50-60% water change, one dose (which is about 7.33:1.66:7.33) and 0.2 Fe + micros, and then a second 50-60% water change a day later. I think the dosage, water changes, and consistency over the last three weeks has really helped.

Mermaid weed is looking nearly perfect. I think even the side shoot that crumpled up a bit when I switched to this dosing has pretty much righted itself.

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The pantanal ended up stunting and new growth was looking really droopy and small, so I topped it. Hopefully the new shoots will be good--they should be fully adjusted to my parameters.

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The rotala macrandra mini ended up being the green/yellow type, so I replaced it with what was labeled as Rotala Mini Butterfly. I want a red plant in that spot, and it doesn't help that the green/yellow type tends to want to crawl and creep a lot in my tank. We'll see what it ends up being, I bought it with the hopes and suspicion that it's actually the mini red macrandra. Kept one stem of the green just for fun and to compare.

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Brownie blue is putting out another new leaf :). Seems to grow at a decent pace.

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Meta continues to grow well and not stunt at all, but also is still curling much to my chagrin.

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For my first adjustment since the new dosing regimen, I'm thinking of lowering micros. Not totally sure yet. I think it's either a mobile deficiency (true or induced) since its only affecting the older leaves or a toxicity.
 
Yo yo yo. So I decided to drop my micros by cutting my dosage in half. Macros are exactly the same, only difference is now I'm dosing .1 Fe as proxy for micros for a total of .3-.4 Fe total weekly.

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I'm at the end of the first week with lower micros. I think Meta looks a bit better, but I'm not totally sure. Definitely not worse. The pantanal shoots have been growing in really well. Going to cut and replant them on Wednesday, so that will be the real test of their apparent happiness.

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Mermaid weed coloring up more. Not sure if the leaf curling on all the upper leaves of the largest stem is a sign of some unhappiness or if it's okay. Going to keep a close eye on it, but I don't see any cause for concern among the other stems .

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Got another rare buce. This one is an unidentified species, but it was too cool to pass on.

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Bacopa coloratura finally arrived. Don't think it's going to work in this spot. Too light of a color. I'm thinking of trying something dark in this spot after these grow out a bit. Right now I'm thinking of trying Echinodorus Aflame Purple Knight or Rotala Florida.

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Noticed some algae on some of the older leaves of the Hygro Siamensis 53b. Don't know if I'm just now noticing it, or if it's a reaction to the decrease in micros. Something else to keep an eye on for sure. Trimmed them off last night. Pretty much always a good idea to trim off leaves with algae. Sometimes certain plants can get rid of minor algae on their leaves if whatever caused it is quickly corrected, but I think these are pretty old leaves so I decided to just trim them off to encourage the plant to grow healthy new leaves.

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Some new submerged shoots are coming off the emersed Rotala Mini Butterfly stumps. I bought this plant with the hopes that it was mislabeled and was actually Rotala Macrandra Mini Type 4 Red lol, but the shoots look like they have narrower leaves, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't mislabeled. Bought some submerged Rotala Macrandra Mini Type 4 Red from a trustworthy Etsy hobbyist, so I'll probably just toss these when the new plants get to me.

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The second batch of submerged downoi I bought from that same trustworthy source arrived this week too in fairly good condition. They are a surprisingly light shade of green. Not sure if downoi is lighter in general than I thought or what exactly is up with them, but hopefully they won't just sit around and die lol.

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Not happy with the contrast between the Hygro and Penthorum here. Need to figure out a better plant for this spot. Always prefer a slower growing species over a weed. Any suggestions would be awesome! Some ideas that have popped up so far is Blyxa Japonica or some type of moss.

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Plan moving forward is to keep dosing the lower micros for another two weeks. If that doesn't fix the problem, I'm thinking of raising some ferts.
 
Yo yo yo. So I decided to drop my micros by cutting my dosage in half. Macros are exactly the same, only difference is now I'm dosing .1 Fe as proxy for micros for a total of .3-.4 Fe total weekly.

View attachment 193106


I'm at the end of the first week with lower micros. I think Meta looks a bit better, but I'm not totally sure. Definitely not worse. The pantanal shoots have been growing in really well. Going to cut and replant them on Wednesday, so that will be the real test of their apparent happiness.

View attachment 193107

Mermaid weed coloring up more. Not sure if the leaf curling on all the upper leaves of the largest stem is a sign of some unhappiness or if it's okay. Going to keep a close eye on it, but I don't see any cause for concern among the other stems .

View attachment 193108

Got another rare buce. This one is an unidentified species, but it was too cool to pass on.

View attachment 193109

Bacopa coloratura finally arrived. Don't think it's going to work in this spot. Too light of a color. I'm thinking of trying something dark in this spot after these grow out a bit. Right now I'm thinking of trying Echinodorus Aflame Purple Knight or Rotala Florida.

View attachment 193110

Noticed some algae on some of the older leaves of the Hygro Siamensis 53b. Don't know if I'm just now noticing it, or if it's a reaction to the decrease in micros. Something else to keep an eye on for sure. Trimmed them off last night. Pretty much always a good idea to trim off leaves with algae. Sometimes certain plants can get rid of minor algae on their leaves if whatever caused it is quickly corrected, but I think these are pretty old leaves so I decided to just trim them off to encourage the plant to grow healthy new leaves.

View attachment 193111

Some new submerged shoots are coming off the emersed Rotala Mini Butterfly stumps. I bought this plant with the hopes that it was mislabeled and was actually Rotala Macrandra Mini Type 4 Red lol, but the shoots look like they have narrower leaves, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't mislabeled. Bought some submerged Rotala Macrandra Mini Type 4 Red from a trustworthy Etsy hobbyist, so I'll probably just toss these when the new plants get to me.

View attachment 193112

The second batch of submerged downoi I bought from that same trustworthy source arrived this week too in fairly good condition. They are a surprisingly light shade of green. Not sure if downoi is lighter in general than I thought or what exactly is up with them, but hopefully they won't just sit around and die lol.

View attachment 193113

Not happy with the contrast between the Hygro and Penthorum here. Need to figure out a better plant for this spot. Always prefer a slower growing species over a weed. Any suggestions would be awesome! Some ideas that have popped up so far is Blyxa Japonica or some type of moss.

View attachment 193114

Plan moving forward is to keep dosing the lower micros for another two weeks. If that doesn't fix the problem, I'm thinking of raising some ferts.
For Pantanal/meta curling. Try playing with boron levels. Too much can inhibit Ca, and RO can already have some Boron since it passes through the membrane. I would drop boron dosing to half, or even zero, results should be seen quickly if this was the issue.
 
For Pantanal/meta curling. Try playing with boron levels. Too much can inhibit Ca, and RO can already have some Boron since it passes through the membrane. I would drop boron dosing to half, or even zero, results should be seen quickly if this was the issue.
Awesome thanks, appreciate any additional hypotheses :). I did cut micros in half from what I was dosing before, so that should have also cut the boron in half. I am using Joe Harvey’s micro mix, so I’m not able to adjust individual micros at this time, but I do plan on making my own eventually. If the issues have anything to the with the overall higher level of micros from before, then they should get at least somewhat noticeably better by the end of the 3 weeks.
 
Awesome thanks, appreciate any additional hypotheses :). I did cut micros in half from what I was dosing before, so that should have also cut the boron in half. I am using Joe Harvey’s micro mix, so I’m not able to adjust individual micros at this time, but I do plan on making my own eventually. If the issues have anything to the with the overall higher level of micros from before, then they should get at least somewhat noticeably better by the end of the 3 weeks.
Joe may be willing to Send you a mix without boron, perhaps ask him? Low macro and Low co2 can also cause this issue, but you have both those aspects covered.
 
I thought that meta was both a bit easier to grow and more colorful than Pantanal. However, Marian Sterian just recently posted something about Meta being less colorful, so I ordered some Pantanal to grow next to the Meta for comparison.
It is. Not sure how he grew Meta, but I can tell you that Meta will be redder than Pantanal which will have more of a pinkish tone. My experience is that Pantanal will grow also slightly slower and send less side shoots.
Mermaid weed has also pretty much always had some issues, so I moved it away from the right corner of the tank to a more high flow area and replanted the tops of the best three plants and left their stumps to propagate some more. So far, the three tops have been growing really well, and I can see new plants coming off the stumps. In the past, at least one of my mermaid stems has eventually stunted and then died. Often when I've uprooted the stunting stem, the base of the stem has been black with no roots, so it could also have been related to my substrate being dirty. But I've also been successful at propagating new stems off a base and then lost the new plant after cutting it off the base and replanting, so I think they haven't been totally happy nutrient wise either.
Mermaid weed is a weird plant. I grew it in my main tank with heavy dosing for 3-4 months without any problem then one by one they started melting away. I think that plant doesn't like heavy fert loading in the water column.
Awesome thanks, appreciate any additional hypotheses :). I did cut micros in half from what I was dosing before, so that should have also cut the boron in half. I am using Joe Harvey’s micro mix, so I’m not able to adjust individual micros at this time, but I do plan on making my own eventually. If the issues have anything to the with the overall higher level of micros from before, then they should get at least somewhat noticeably better by the end of the 3 weeks.
To me your issue with Meta/Pantanal is not the micro dosing or the ferts directly. It's the WC%. You are basically dosing full EI and doing 50% water changes weekly. Ferts are accumulating at a heavy rate with a 50% WC. One could argue it's the ferts, but to me it's more the accumulation that's hitting you. I would actually suggest adding some root tabs and increase the WC% to 60%/70%.
 
It is. Not sure how he grew Meta, but I can tell you that Meta will be redder than Pantanal which will have more of a pinkish tone. My experience is that Pantanal will grow also slightly slower and send less side shoots.

Mermaid weed is a weird plant. I grew it in my main tank with heavy dosing for 3-4 months without any problem then one by one they started melting away. I think that plant doesn't like heavy fert loading in the water column.

To me your issue with Meta/Pantanal is not the micro dosing or the ferts directly. It's the WC%. You are basically dosing full EI and doing 50% water changes weekly. Ferts are accumulating at a heavy rate with a 50% WC. One could argue it's the ferts, but to me it's more the accumulation that's hitting you. I would actually suggest adding some root tabs and increase the WC% to 60%/70%.
Yeah you seem spot on about the Pantanal. Also, it has more space between nodes at the same parameters and lighting and I think less leaves per node. The leaves also feel slightly different.

Before I started the EI dosing I did a bunch of water changes and got the previous accumulation down pretty much to zero. I actually do 2 two weekly water changes of about 50-60% each week. My dosing is 3 doses, water change, 1 dose, water change, and repeat. So I’m actually changing 75% or more per week, so I don’t think accumulation is really a factor. One thing I do plan on trying eventually is lower macros/less ferts overall. That was Vin Kutty’s suggestion to me—to lower my dosing by about 1/3.

Joe Harvey has grown Mermaid Weed beautifully for years at high levels of ferts and moderately high KH (4-6). So it definitely can be grown and do really well with higher ferts. It could be that it’s easier to grow well consistently with a rich substrate and lower levels of water column ferts as seems to be the case with lythracae though, but it definitely can grow well with high ferts.
 
Before I started the EI dosing I did a bunch of water changes and got the previous accumulation down pretty much to zero. I actually 2 two weekly water changes of about 50-60% each week. My dosing is 3 doses, water change, 1 dose, water change, and repeat. So I’m actually changing 75% or more per week, so I don’t think accumulation is really a factor. One thing I do plan on trying eventually is lower macros/less ferts overall. That was Vin Kutty’s suggestion to me—to lower my dosing by about 1/3.
Good. Agreed with Vin's suggestion. There is no need to dose that much. Plus the higher K will force you to trim more often which if your soil is depleted is not a good thing.
Keep it up.
 
Good. Agreed with Vin's suggestion. There is no need to dose that much. Plus the higher K will force you to trim more often which if your soil is depleted is not a good thing.
Keep it up.
Yeah his suggestion that less is more until it’s not enough is definitely persuasive. I’m a big fan of his kill tank stuff and I started my high tech journey dosing for 2 years with APT complete, so I’m not foreign to lower levels. With you siding with him too I’m leaning towards trying that next rather than raising levels if the lower micros don’t pan out :). Can you elaborate more on the K/soil comment? Don’t N and P mostly drive the faster growth? And where does my substrate come into play?
 
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