Consistency Deficiency

[Hufsa]

An unrelated note, this picture illustrates really well the difference in tolerance/requirements for different plant species and how unhappy/unhealthy plants are like magnets for algae.

To the left is Bacopa caroliniana 'Colorata'. Excuse the strange color, it turns pink under high light but my light is currently moderate so its this funky color instead.
To the right is Ludwigia inclinata var. verticillata 'Pantanal'.
The Bacopa is like the Honey badger, it dont care. There is nary a speck of algae on this plant even though there are several fairly severe issues going on in my tank. Its pretty clear the plant is still well within its specific tolerance ranges, since it is growing relatively well and isnt attracting/spawning any algae. The Pantanal on the other hand is, to say it lightly, a demanding plant. The older leaves are completely wilted and have been eaten by the livestock, the second oldest growth is covered in BBA and the newer portion is covered in slimy green thread algae. The tip has stunted and the plant is trying to restart by making a new tip.
These plants grow right next to each other, get the same amount of light, flow, exactly the same ferts. One has a ton of algae and one looks perfectly content.

Some plants have really wide ranges of parameters where they will still thrive and do well. Some plants have super narrow parameter ranges or very specific demands.
If you keep a tank of only the first kind of plant then the odds of you running into issues will be much lower. Same for vice versa. A mixed tank will really highlight the differences between the species/varieties.
The algae is on the Pantanal and not the Bacopa for a reason. Healthy plants wont have algae on them.
Then its just the "simple task" (not) of getting all the plants you want to keep to a healthy place / a parameter range that suits everybody.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

 

[Hufsa]

I dosed the first dose yesterday evening and so far the snails seem to be ok. I think I could be owed a little bit of luck in this situation.
Most of the sand snails are below the substrate in daytime, im pretty sure they know when the CO2 is on, and most of them hide away until the PH goes back to a less damaging level for their shells.
Maybe they can also sense the medication. I hope they pull through..

Most, if not all of the sand snails have now died 😢

I cant spot any alive ones, Im kinda hoping a few will have miraculously survived deep in the sand and will repopulate my tank, but this dream is looking a little thin at the moment.
Most of the shells in the picture were empty, Im wondering if the kuhliis with the help of some shrimp have been eating the snails as they went over the rainbow bridge.. 🤐
When I finally discovered this pile (its pretty well hidden behind the plants and I thought the snails were just hiding in the sand), I instantly worried that I would be seeing an ammonia spike resulting from it. Strangely enough nothing seems to have happened in the tank, no bacteria bloom or increase in green algae of the fast and sudden type, no upset fish or really anything to put my finger on.
I think if there was any sudden increase in ammonia production then the plants probably took it as soon as it was available. It also probably helped that the snails were eaten instead of sitting around rotting, as morbid as that sounds. I didnt test the water for anything, Ive kinda been too sad about losing my sand snails to do much of anything about anything, even though I should have.

Im grateful for having so many fast growing plants picking up my slack, even when the slack is me being frozen by sadness. My tank seems quite a bit more robust now that the plants are growing with CO2-injection. It may be my imagination but the tank just takes a lot of things in its stride, and bounces back from insults very fast now compared to before. If it truly is like that then this somewhat makes up for the risks associated with CO2 I think.

Its too early to say if the No Planaria has worked well enough for treating the Scutariella, I try to check as many shrimp as I can each day on feeding time, but they are never all out at the same time, and there was only two shrimp out of a population of maybe a hundred that even had the parasite.
I will need to repeat the treatment in about a week to get the eggs that may hatch any way, so not much I can do other than monitor for now.
Really sad about the sand snails 😟 The other snail species in my tank dont seem to be affected, I still see them crawling around.

Yesterday I got a few 25mm PVC end caps from the pet store and today I started work on the CO2 spray bar, I am looking forward to hopefully getting my CO2-injection stable again.
The rotala rotundifolia varieties and mini macrandra are still acting up and I really want to get them back to growing well again.
I got about 2/3 of the way with cutting and sawing the bar itself, at some point I was cutting fingers more than I was cutting the PVC so I decided to break for the day and continue tomorrow with hopefully less blood 🙃
Then it needs sanding and a few coats of safe paint before drying and finally testing it out. I will need to make sure I can stay home with the tank all day for the first day or two since I dont want any unpleasant gas related incidents.

Looking forward to getting my tank back on track, it looks pretty terrible right now and doesnt bring me a lot of joy. The progress is pretty slow because of me, but im confident that I will get there eventually, so just have to stay with it 😊 Grateful for having such kind plants who are complaining but not dying, good sweet plants 😊 (Not Pantanal though, not nice at all )

 

[Hufsa]

Doing a bit of brainstorming here on my strange chlorosis issue, im not going to change the ferts at the moment im just doing some thinking for the future.
It doesnt make any sense to try out different ferts now when there are supply issues with the biggest plant nutrient carbon (CO2).
The growth of the plants right now is not stable and then why would their uptake of the other nutrients be. My physical energy is better spent fixing this huge glaring issue than making new ferts.
I havent just decided that my CO2 has issues, I have actually measured the drop and watched the curve several days, not with PH profile regularity, but enough to know that its jumping around all over the place.
That coupled with a bunch of plants screaming and twisting and the balance of the tank noticeably being off to my spidey sense is enough for me to be pretty sure that its an issue.
But that being said, when CO2 is sorted I have no reason to believe that the strange chlorosis issue wont continue. It was there before the CO2 issue and it will probably still be there after.

So the closest we have gotten to solving the chlorosis is with the current mix, which is relatively lower on micros than on iron.
On some of the easier plants the issue is not noticeable or not noticeable unless you know to look for it, and I would estimate the greenness is at about 75%-80% of where it should be.
Just to have a term to use lets say 75%. So the current mix is a fair bit better than previous ones, which have resulted in much more chlorosis and much "lower percentages of greenness". Especially compared to whatever the plants had access to on that fateful week a while back where the Tonina basically turned white. I would call that 10% greenness compared to 75% on the current mix.


Previous result with using the 75% greenness mix:


Then I tried what looked like a good idea on paper, raising Mn and the other micros to be more in line with the iron. Plants didnt like that, somewhat less green, lets call it 50%:


Switched back to the 75% mix some weeks ago, dont have a current picture but hopefully the Tonina should look something like the previous 75% picture again.
Will take new pictures to confirm once things have calmed down a bit again.

Thoughts:
The water starts turning pink about a week after a water change, and this pink color strongly indicates that there is excess iron (Fe EDDHA) in the water column. This is corroborated by the water column testing positive for iron with a liquid test (exact ppm's not super important imo).
My question is, if this chlorosis is caused by a lack of iron in the plant, then why wouldnt the plants uptake the EDDHA?
Fe EDDHA is not super easy to uptake for plants compared to something like Fe Gluconate, but could it be so much harder to uptake that the plants would suffer iron deficiency while sitting in pink water? I find that idea hard to get behind, but I cant rule it out completely of course.
Previously I saw the plants got better, but not all the way to 100%, and then assumed that the remaining issue might be manganese (Mn). If the iron is plentiful and the issue persists then raising the second most needed trace that also can result in chlorosis seemed like a logical choice. Unfortunately I got a little bit greedy with my changes and I also raised the other traces, which means we didnt get to observe what effect raising just Mn had. Zn, B, Cu and Mo were also raised.
According to Mulder's chart (yep shes going there folks, desperate times call for desperate measures 😂 )
Zn exhibits antagonism with Fe, Mn, and Cu.
Cu exhibits antagonism with Fe, Mn, and Zn.
B and Mo is not likely an issue.
So me raising Zn and Cu along with the Mn could have affected the outcome I suppose.

Thats gives us one thing we could try, raising just Mn and nothing else. (Again, not right now of course, needs to wait until things are stable again)
Since the plants grow perfectly "ok" with the 75% greenness recipe, I can afford to take my time and make only small changes from that baseline.
I need to restrain myself from doing too many changes at once even if I think it makes sense at the time.

Another thing we could try is switching the Fe EDDHA and DTPA, for some mix of Fe Gluconate and DTPA. Very interestingly @KirstyF saw good results in her tank, at the same total level of iron dosing, when switching out her chelates. I believe she was dosing something like 0.3 ppm Fe total with stronger chelates and seeing chlorosis, and when she switched to the same 0.3 total but with weaker chelates, the chlorosis stopped. With her very hard tap water it makes no sense that it would work better but somehow it did.
Part of me wonders if parts of the Fe Gluconate just precipitated for her and somehow that worked out with the total micro balance, but I dont know man.

Im grasping at straws with the chlorosis because I dont really know whats going on, and it seems neither does anyone else.
If someone asked me a year ago if I thought micro ferts mattered this much or if there was any point in futzing around with such small changes then I would have said "no way!".
But unless one of ya'll want to step in and tell me what I need to do to fix this chlorosis, then this is what I have to resort to.
And I swear to god if someone says "More CO2!" to fix chlorosis then they're gonna get smacked with an Eheim pipe It works for a lot of problems but not this one 😋

More things to try might be looking closer at whatever @plantnoobdude is doing for traces (that glorious b*stard with his beautiful plants ), since he previously had chlorosis issues but has now fixed them (by going very low). I imagine maybe I wont be able to dose quite as low as he does if there is any link between water hardness and micros needed, since he uses bespoke remineralization to RO water while I am using tap water with a little bit of hardness. I will also be very interested to see if his super low micro dosing continues to work now that he has switched to sand.

Basically theres a few different things I can try later on and these are my thoughts on them. Would be happy to hear more thoughts on this from anyone reading this post 😊

Im off to saw off my knuckles continue working on the CO2 spray bar

 

[erwin123]

Wouldn't the 50% green be considered 'healthy enough?'
My Tonina's are look like they are at the 50% green level - they have plenty of healthy sideshoots so I assume the plant is growing well even though it is not as 'green' as the 75% green.

 

[plantnoobdude]

Doing a bit of brainstorming here on my strange chlorosis issue, im not going to change the ferts at the moment im just doing some thinking for the future.
It doesnt make any sense to try out different ferts now when there are supply issues with the biggest plant nutrient carbon (CO2).
The growth of the plants right now is not stable and then why would their uptake of the other nutrients be. My physical energy is better spent fixing this huge glaring issue than making new ferts.
I havent just decided that my CO2 has issues, I have actually measured the drop and watched the curve several days, not with PH profile regularity, but enough to know that its jumping around all over the place.
That coupled with a bunch of plants screaming and twisting and the balance of the tank noticeably being off to my spidey sense is enough for me to be pretty sure that its an issue.
But that being said, when CO2 is sorted I have no reason to believe that the strange chlorosis issue wont continue. It was there before the CO2 issue and it will probably still be there after.

So the closest we have gotten to solving the chlorosis is with the current mix, which is relatively lower on micros than on iron.
On some of the easier plants the issue is not noticeable or not noticeable unless you know to look for it, and I would estimate the greenness is at about 75%-80% of where it should be.
Just to have a term to use lets say 75%. So the current mix is a fair bit better than previous ones, which have resulted in much more chlorosis and much "lower percentages of greenness". Especially compared to whatever the plants had access to on that fateful week a while back where the Tonina basically turned white. I would call that 10% greenness compared to 75% on the current mix.
View attachment 196154

Previous result with using the 75% greenness mix:
View attachment 196156

Then I tried what looked like a good idea on paper, raising Mn and the other micros to be more in line with the iron. Plants didnt like that, somewhat less green, lets call it 50%:
View attachment 196159

Switched back to the 75% mix some weeks ago, dont have a current picture but hopefully the Tonina should look something like the previous 75% picture again.
Will take new pictures to confirm once things have calmed down a bit again.

Thoughts:
The water starts turning pink about a week after a water change, and this pink color strongly indicates that there is excess iron (Fe EDDHA) in the water column. This is corroborated by the water column testing positive for iron with a liquid test (exact ppm's not super important imo).
My question is, if this chlorosis is caused by a lack of iron in the plant, then why wouldnt the plants uptake the EDDHA?
Fe EDDHA is not super easy to uptake for plants compared to something like Fe Gluconate, but could it be so much harder to uptake that the plants would suffer iron deficiency while sitting in pink water? I find that idea hard to get behind, but I cant rule it out completely of course.
Previously I saw the plants got better, but not all the way to 100%, and then assumed that the remaining issue might be manganese (Mn). If the iron is plentiful and the issue persists then raising the second most needed trace that also can result in chlorosis seemed like a logical choice. Unfortunately I got a little bit greedy with my changes and I also raised the other traces, which means we didnt get to observe what effect raising just Mn had. Zn, B, Cu and Mo were also raised.
According to Mulder's chart (yep shes going there folks, desperate times call for desperate measures 😂 )
Zn exhibits antagonism with Fe, Mn, and Cu.
Cu exhibits antagonism with Fe, Mn, and Zn.
B and Mo is not likely an issue.
So me raising Zn and Cu along with the Mn could have affected the outcome I suppose.

Thats gives us one thing we could try, raising just Mn and nothing else. (Again, not right now of course, needs to wait until things are stable again)
Since the plants grow perfectly "ok" with the 75% greenness recipe, I can afford to take my time and make only small changes from that baseline.
I need to restrain myself from doing too many changes at once even if I think it makes sense at the time.

Another thing we could try is switching the Fe EDDHA and DTPA, for some mix of Fe Gluconate and DTPA. Very interestingly @KirstyF saw good results in her tank, at the same total level of iron dosing, when switching out her chelates. I believe she was dosing something like 0.3 ppm Fe total with stronger chelates and seeing chlorosis, and when she switched to the same 0.3 total but with weaker chelates, the chlorosis stopped. With her very hard tap water it makes no sense that it would work better but somehow it did.
Part of me wonders if parts of the Fe Gluconate just precipitated for her and somehow that worked out with the total micro balance, but I dont know man.

Im grasping at straws with the chlorosis because I dont really know whats going on, and it seems neither does anyone else.
If someone asked me a year ago if I thought micro ferts mattered this much or if there was any point in futzing around with such small changes then I would have said "no way!".
But unless one of ya'll want to step in and tell me what I need to do to fix this chlorosis, then this is what I have to resort to.
And I swear to god if someone says "More CO2!" to fix chlorosis then they're gonna get smacked with an Eheim pipe It works for a lot of problems but not this one 😋

More things to try might be looking closer at whatever @plantnoobdude is doing for traces (that glorious b*stard with his beautiful plants ), since he previously had chlorosis issues but has now fixed them (by going very low). I imagine maybe I wont be able to dose quite as low as he does if there is any link between water hardness and micros needed, since he uses bespoke remineralization to RO water while I am using tap water with a little bit of hardness. I will also be very interested to see if his super low micro dosing continues to work now that he has switched to sand.

Basically theres a few different things I can try later on and these are my thoughts on them. Would be happy to hear more thoughts on this from anyone reading this post 😊

Im off to saw off my knuckles continue working on the CO2 spray bar

Fe 0.0875ppm DTPA
Mn 0.0465ppm Edta
Zn 0.015ppm. EDTA
Cu 0.00275ppm EDTA
Mo 0.002ppm NH4
Ni. 0.00035ppm SO4
B. 0ppm
Is what I dose weekly. If needed you can try dose that x2 or three per week and add your Eddha as well.
Add some B as well if you want, 1:1~2:1 B:Zn seems to be a good start.

 

[Hufsa]

Wouldn't the 50% green be considered 'healthy enough?'
My Tonina's are look like they are at the 50% green level - they have plenty of healthy sideshoots so I assume the plant is growing well even though it is not as 'green' as the 75% green.

Hmm not healthy enough for me 🤔 Everyone will have different goals for what they want from their tank I suspect. I am especially interested in trying to tease out as close to ideal/perfect plant forms as I can within the setup that I have.
I want new leaves to be very close to or the same color as mature leaves, as close as the specific plant species will allow. Obviously the species are a bit different in how new growth looks, take the java fern for instance with translucent new tips. But im fairly sure there is more green to be had in Tonina than the pic I have called 75%.
You get sideshoots on your Tonina? How interesting, mine dont do that for some reason.

...Is what I dose weekly.

Thanks for the updated numbers 😃 Ill jot them down so I have them accessible. I might have to dose some Boron yes, my tap water contains very little afaik.

 

[erwin123]

Hmm not healthy enough for me 🤔 Everyone will have different goals for what they want from their tank I suspect. I am especially interested in trying to tease out as close to ideal/perfect plant forms as I can within the setup that I have.
I want new leaves to be very close to or the same color as mature leaves, as close as the specific plant species will allow. Obviously the species are a bit different in how new growth looks, take the java fern for instance with translucent new tips. But im fairly sure there is more green to be had in Tonina than the pic I have called 75%.
You get sideshoots on your Tonina? How interesting, mine dont do that for some reason.

Ah, I didn't know you were not getting sideshoots... will let @plantnoobdude update us on whether he gets sideshoots in his.
This is shot of the lower leaves of the Toninas. There is on the right, a single stem of what I believe is a cuphea with lots of BBA on the lower stem. The part with the BBA is the old growth so I guess I should cut and replant soon. However, since I unable to get any colour out of it I'm probably not keeping it....

 

[Hufsa]

View attachment 196169

Can you take a photo from the top too with the surface agitation off? Because of how cameras react to strong aquarium lights, comparing lightness from side photos can be quite difficult

 

[plantnoobdude]

will let @plantnoobdude update us on whether he gets sideshoots in his

Lemme get a pic.

believe is a cuphea

Yup, that’s cuphea. A real pain to grow to be honest.
Here are mine, they only make side shoots when they reach the top of the tank, but again, fluviatilis and lotus blossom could have different growth habits! I am quite happy of the fact that old leaves are healthy with no apparent signs of deterioration.

 

[plantnoobdude]

 

[John q]

there is excess iron (Fe EDDHA) in the water column. This is corroborated by the water column

Im grasping at straws with the chlorosis because I dont really know whats going on, and it seems neither does anyone else.

And I swear to god if someone says "More CO2!" to fix chlorosis then they're gonna get smacked with an Eheim pipe It works for a lot of problems but not this one 😋

Do you wanna smack me with the pipe? 😁 or twiddle with ratios? It's not the amount, it's the consistency.

 

[Hufsa]

Do you wanna smack me with the pipe? 😁 or twiddle with ratios? It's not the amount, it's the consistency.

There has been consistent surplus of iron for a couple of months now John. Why arent the plants uptaking it?

 

[John q]

There has been consistent surplus of iron for a couple of months now John. Why arent the plants uptaking it?

Because it's not an iron deficiency, would be my guess mate. Don't scream at me but.. is the CO2 stable 🤔

 

[Hufsa]

Because it's not an iron deficiency, would be my guess mate. Don't scream at me but.. is the CO2 stable 🤔

Chlorosis is not a symptom related to CO2.

Ill say it one more time for people who might be hard of hearing:
Chlorosis is not a symptom related to CO2.

Not everything is about CO2 John.
CO2 plays a major role in high tech tanks because it is the biggest plant nutrient and it doesnt particularly want to be in the water. We all know this.
But just because it is a big player does not make it the ONLY player.
If you really cant come to terms with that then I think it would be better for you to keep your suggestions on this problem to yourself.

 

[plantnoobdude]

Chlorosis is not a symptom related to CO2.

Ill say it one more time for people who might be hard of hearing:
Chlorosis is not a symptom related to CO2.

Not everything is about CO2 John.
CO2 plays a major role in high tech tanks because it is the biggest plant nutrient and it doesnt particularly want to be in the water. We all know this.
But just because it is a big player does not make it the ONLY player.
If you really cant come to terms with that then I think it would be better for you to keep your suggestions on this problem to yourself.

I’m going to have to agree….

 

[KirstyF]

There has been consistent surplus of iron for a couple of months now John. Why arent the plants uptaking it?

I think that a very valid question John.

Cos this wasn’t Co2

Or this

Or this

And it was solved, not by increasing Fe but by changing the type of Fe used.

So that there is a ferts issue right!

The question is why did a mix that includes Fe gluconate fix the issue (in my hard water tank) when both a DTPA and a DTPA/EDDHA mix failed?

Hufsa’s issue/tank may not be identical but nor should we conclude that ferts are not the problem. They clearly were for me.

Co2 was not changed in the making of this blyxa. 😂

 

[John q]

I’m going to have to agree….

To be honest I also agree but adding more iron, regardless of its chleate is clearly not working. Probably time for me to sit this one out.

Hugs and kisses @Hufsa no hard feelings 😘

 

[JoshP12]

Been sitting here thinking what to say.

If something has no (or little) inhibition (such as something blocking it or making it more difficult … like co2 at higher KH is harder), and it is in abundance (over the demand for that moment), then increasing the concentration won’t fix it. Unless, the increase in concentration will overcome the amount of inhibition.

In other words, 30 co2 in high KH water may yield deficiency but 50 co2 will fix it. Conversely, reducing KH to lower KH may make 30 co2 fine. But lowering KH will decrease its inhibition of other factors such as MAYBE - just pretend - Ca and Mg … and so even though co2 works better … maybe the things Ca and Mg interact with will be skewed. And we begin to see a cascade of deficiency that didn’t exist under one circumstance but the same parameters would induce them in another.

I think that’s where we are. You have a water column and a substrate playing together to meet a demand. The substrate has roots to somewhat selectively (with help from the surrounding biology etc) extract nutrients from it and meet any demand. The water has leaves to do the same thing but extract it from water. These two systems (top and bottom) work together to meet the demand ironically, dictated by the demand 😂.

It’s constant chaos, a juggle, of trying to grow with a somewhat changing system. That’s the consistency piece - to make it easier for the plant since the demand would in theory oscillate around some “inertia” (since as it grows, the demands and environment change yet again (also responding to everything else around if) but that’s too much to consider).

But what happens if you’re consistently providing an environment where the inhibitions are too hard to overcome for the set of conditions? The plant adapts to the best it can - growing with deficiency. Twisting, chlorosis etc.

It’s like these two dynamical systems which respond to eachother - and there is some nutrients that allow the communication to happen (might be potassium 😂). Once they figure it out, they grow to try to survive.

I haven’t considered if co2 could have any relation to chlorosis … but if we take the same lens to deficiencies as we do to algae (so BBA means you messed up something worse than if you green thread for example … or staghorn vs bba), then the smaller the deformity, the smaller the issue?

Stunting, curling - is bigger than a bit of inter veinal chlorosis … I don’t know if co2 could have a small enough impact on a plant to cause zero deformity except for a little off coloration …

Never thought about it.

All that to say, without nutrients at the roots, it’s harder since you only have the top to “get it right”.

What a ramble 😅.

 

[Hufsa]

The question is why did a mix that includes Fe gluconate fix the issue (in my hard water tank) when both a DTPA and a DTPA/EDDHA mix failed?

Thats the big question isnt it. It doesnt really fit with what we think about iron chelates.
Switching Fe DTPA & EDDHA to DTPA and Gluconate is probably the next thing ill try on the micro front, to see if I can replicate the same results.
I never would have thought it would make a difference, especially in a tank with 12 dKH like Kirsty's, but its hard to argue with those pictures, and Kirsty keeps her tank pretty dang stable.
As ive already mentioned a couple of times im not doing micro tweaking for a while because I have more pressing concerns at the moment like the CO2 stability being off (it has been a small problem over summer but turned into a big problem when I changed when the skimmer runs and thus the surface agitation - injection balance).
This has produced noticeable but very different symptoms to chlorosis. Twisting, curling, puckering and sudden stunting of plants that were previously growing perfectly well formed leaves, plants not recovering well from trims, algae blooms, those sorts of symptoms. Im on top of it, but its a different thing from chlorosis.
Im not going to add any more iron, the water is pink and the iron test readout is solid, so there wouldnt be any point in adding just more of the exact same stuff.
Its even possible that I could try to decrease the iron/micros later on (when the chlorosis is gone), IF the level of micros needed follow the KH/GH. So hard water could need more micros because of precipitation or uptake issues. Im not saying thats the case though, its just an interesting idea. If 0.3 ppm Fe is enough in Kirsty's tank with 12dKH, and 0.0875 ppm Fe is enough in Plantnoobdude's tank with 0 or 1 dKH, then my tank with 3 dKH could need something between that. It could explain why no one seems to agree on how much micros you need, and a few other bits.

It would be super interesting if @KirstyF would try leaving everything the same, but instead of dosing DTPA and gluconate, dose only DTPA and NOT replace the gluconate with anything (so same amount of DTPA, no Gluconate, meaning less iron in total).
If it gives the exact same results then odds are the gluconate was precipitating before the plants could get it, and not contributing much. But if the plants turn pale again, then it indicates that its actually getting to the plants despite the very hard water. We would then possibly have to adjust our traditional view that Fe Gluconate is of little use in hard water tanks.

Hufsa’s issue/tank may not be identical but nor should we conclude that ferts are not the problem. They clearly were for me.

Co2 was not changed in the making of this blyxa. 😂

Exactly 😊

Nutrient tunnel vision is definitely a real thing. Ive had it before and I am wary of getting it again, its not productive and just leads you around in circles for a while before you figure it out.
However there also seems to be some sort of CO2 tunnel vision going around, which isnt that much better than the former.
Just like not everything is a nutrient issue, not everything is a CO2 issue either. Black and white thinking is tempting and easy but performs poorly in a shades of grey world.
Im pretty sure that in order to become a skilled aquarist you have to be able to view the system as a whole, and identify and address potential issues in all aspects of the tank.
Light, CO2, flow, fertilizer, maintenance, etc etc.

It’s constant chaos, a juggle, of trying to grow with a somewhat changing system. That’s the consistency piece - to make it easier for the plant since the demand would in theory oscillate around some “inertia” (since as it grows, the demands and environment change yet again (also responding to everything else around if) but that’s too much to consider).

Definitely a lot of moving parts in a planted tank, biomass is always changing, flow is altered as plants grow in, pipes grow biofilm and get cleaned making small variations in flow, all kinds of stuff.

I haven’t considered if co2 could have any relation to chlorosis … but if we take the same lens to deficiencies as we do to algae (so BBA means you messed up something worse than if you green thread for example … or staghorn vs bba), then the smaller the deformity, the smaller the issue?

Stunting, curling - is bigger than a bit of inter veinal chlorosis … I don’t know if co2 could have a small enough impact on a plant to cause zero deformity except for a little off coloration …

I do firmly believe that big issues come from big causes, and small issues from small causes. I also think that remembering this is how you navigate in rabbit holes that are really easy to get lost in in this hobby. Thats not to say that a lot of small issues couldnt manifest into a big-ish problem, but it is less likely I think.
Take something like CO2 which is the nutrient in the highest demand, any significant problems with this and you should see big issues happening, a lot of the symptoms of CO2 issues are fairly dramatic and many of them are stopping of growth (stunting) or interruptions of normal growth and expansion (twisting, curling etc).
While a small issue, lets say... Mo is too low. You might see a small problem somewhere. Something not being quite right. But nothing dramatic. A trace nutrient so far down on the list should not be a likely candidate when you are trouble shooting bigger issues.
So when troubleshooting we have to keep both the size of the factors (like how much a plant needs of x nutrient) but also how likely an issue is to be x or y (if youre already adding x then maybe its not a lack of x).
If one convinces themselves that a really big problem is coming from a really small factor then the odds are that they are mistaken.

Im acutely aware of this as I am futzing about down here with Fe and Mn. But im not blaming any stunting or major structural issues on this. Production of chlorophyll in my tank is a bit off.
Not dramatically so (dramatic chlorosis would need a dramatic cause, like a week of three 75% water changes stripping the water column, that did happen).

All that to say, without nutrients at the roots, it’s harder since you only have the top to “get it right”.

Definitely harder to get everything "just right". But kinda fun also though! 😄

What a ramble 😅.

Wouldnt have it any other way 😊

 

[Hufsa]

CO2 spray bar has been painted with numerous coats of black Plasti-Dip and is now hanging to dry 💪
The can says it needs to dry for at least 10 hours, but I will probably leave it a fair bit longer because I want to make absolutely sure all the solvents have evaporated off and the paint cured completely.

I hope I can get the CO2 spray bar to work for me, otherwise im afraid @22802 wont love me any more! 😭
😁

As far as "aquarium safe" black paints go, the two main options Ive found in my earlier research are Krylon Fusion and brand-name Plasti-Dip.
The Krylon Fusion is a "normal" kind of spray paint, while the Plasti Dip can technically be peeled off if you apply it in a thick enough layer, its like a rubber coating.
For our usage this is not really a bonus, we dont want the black coating on our black painted PVC pipes etc to come off.
But I have heard Krylon Fusion isnt entirely perfect either, and does scratch over time depending on how hard it is handled. Maybe @Wookii has some experience with it and can shed light?
This is my first time using Plasti-Dip so im interested to see how it will work out long term.
I still need to sort out some pipe holders for the suction cups, all of my pipe holder things stop at 20mm size, and while those could squeeze onto a 25mm pipe, they would definitely be hard on the paint, so I need to DIY something.
Really looking forward to hopefully have a stable CO2 injection again, my plants will breathe a big sigh of relief 😊