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Floater deficiency - hygroryza aristata

ajadcock

Member
Joined
3 Sep 2012
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Location
Braintree
Hi all,

Bought some of this from three-fingers on here (thanks mate!) And as you can see Im the photo some leaves are yellowing quite quick. There is some new growth which is OK.

Are we thinking it's a deficiency or just a bit of transport stress and new/different tank parameters?

Thanks
Adam

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Sigh. Photo added this time :)
 

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The leaves of this need to sit on the water, as soon as they dip under it they will die off ime. This is what I think your seeing combined with shipping.
 
Don't worry, it will recover from the stress fast!

As Marcel says, I've heard it is fairly hungry for nutrients, but the new growth is healthy so your probably good.

The tank it came from is dosed with EI levels of nutrients, I also grow it in a messy goldfish tank that I irregularly dose micros into, however have never tried with no extra fertiliser. Some cheap KNO3 and/or KH2PO4 should easily cure any deficiency should you see it.

It only look like the old/more easily damaged leaves are under the water, so your fine there :thumbup:.
 
Fingers (or Mr Fingers?!) - I have some dry ferts which are used occasionally as it's only a low tech affair so hopefully all good :)

new growth is looking good so maybe i'll remove a couple of the affected leaves? Or just let it do its thing?

Cheers!

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I generally wait until most of the green has gone before I remove a leaf, as the plant may still be able to recover some resources from the dying leaves before they fall off.

Removing them will do no harm though (as long as it still floats well), and dying leaves attract algae (which I actually encourage in some tanks), so it's up you :).
 
I always have problem with floaters....I killed 2 out of 3 a few months back, only the salvinia is barely surviving. I did think initially its due to transport but even if a plant as easy as salvinia can't do too well....(For those that don't know, its an open top tank. Plants are not forced under water, no condensation, and the only factor is nutrients and light the latter of which I think have enough of)There isn't enough ferts in the water column to feed floaters if one doesn't dose a lot of ferts, has relatively low bioload, and is a fan of water changes with water pretty much void of nutrients, especially nitrogen.

The problem is I don't want to dose much fertilizer or have a tank where everything revolves around plant's health, because that's not how I keep up with fish''s health. I keep plants as a redundancy mechanism, not as the sole purpose of a tank. One needs to find a happy medium. If it turns out one can't support the volume of plants...so be it...If I need more plants...I get more plants...Or at least that's the conclusion I've come to...Floaters are good for polluted tanks where CO2 isn't injected..

If there isn't much nitrogen to support them, there surely isn't much need for them at this point of time. At least its not a necessity to have many plants, especially hungry floaters.... but one needs to have a good bunch of plants all the time in a tank....And I do like to stick to floaters and especially large emersed plants because I keep low tech tanks, no co2. They survive. They just don't flourish all the time...When they do....there's a bit too much of stuff I don't want in a tank...
 
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and light the latter of which I think have enough of

Still it could well be the floater is thinking different.. :) In my little open top high tech tank i had an unstoppable mega load of salvinia growing and many other emersed growth. Because of this other emersed growth i had to gradualy hang the lights a bit higher. Started with 10 cm above the surface and now 2 years into the process i'm 40 cm above the surface. And about all Salvinia is gone.

Most floaters are light hogs and with that obviously also fert hogs too. The Hygroryza arista is next to that also a bit temperatur sensitive plant.. I yet not managed to grow it outdoor in the summer getting full sunlight as floater. Probably still haven't been warm enough till now. But emersed non floating in substrate as grassy plant it grew very good, but died (indoors) last winter. :)
 
Hi all,
The problem is I don't want to dose much fertilizer or have a tank where everything revolves around plant's health, because that's not how I keep up with fish''s health. I keep plants as a redundancy mechanism, not as the sole purpose of a tank. One needs to find a happy medium. If it turns out one can't support the volume of plants...so be it...If I need more plants...I get more plants...Or at least that's the conclusion I've come to...Floaters are good for polluted tanks where CO2 isn't injected..
I think the more "polluted" your tank water is the more useful floaters are. I do the same as @sciencefiction with plant mass, I just let it grow until it reaches peak plant.

I've found that both Salvinia "auriculata" & Limnobium laevigatum will persist at very low nutrient levels. I don't know what those levels are, but I only have ~100 microS conductivity, so there can't be much of anything. That is why I prefer Amazon Frogbit (Limnobium) to Duckweed (Lemna minor) for the Duckweed Index, Lemna isn't persistent under low nutrients, or low pH. I think that unless you have very low nutrient water light is going to be the factor that controls the eventual plant mass. <"Hygroryza aristata"> was never happy with me and dwindled away over a couple of months.
If there isn't much nitrogen to support them, there surely isn't much need for them at this point of time.
Yes I would agree with that, they are very much there as a visual indicator of changes in nutrient levels, they are your Canary. Because they aren't CO2 limited if they suddenly green and start growing, nutrients have been added.

Their other role is as a nutrient sponge, meaning that if you have chloramine added to your water, or an undiscovered dead fish etc, they will being reducing ammonia levels straight away, and hopefully they will keep your fish alive until a change in their growth alerts you to the fact that something has gone wrong.

cheers Darrel
 
Still it could well be the floater is thinking different.

I know what you're saying Marcel, because I've always been one of those that promotes higher light in low tech tanks...but I don't think that's the situation with my particular plants right now...

As far as the salvinia is concerned...I am certain that's not the case..in my case..I already tested a bunch of it in a bowl loaded with nutrients..The bowl only got a bit of light from the tank next to it...less than the ones in the tank for sure. And they started growing normal. The nitrogen deficiency is visible not just on the salvinia. Its on the emersed plants as well..my peace lilies and the parlour palm I keep. And even the underwater crypts have been shedding old leaves....I do still dose a tiny bit of micros and iron in the tank to prevent iron deficiency...I just stopped dosing nitrogen and I am letting the nitrogen be the limit to their growth.

When I set up my previous tank..I had a bunch of salvinia in it at the start. It was a soil tank...The salvinia only lasted(multiplied at a crazy rate) while the water column was loaded with ferts leaking from the soil...that is a few months only. Then it dwindled and died...under the same light conditions...with the exact same signs I am seeing now...Only this tank does not have any soil in it besides a bit in the plant pots...and nutrient levels mostly depend on me at this stage....The tank is over 700 litres and has a bunch of small enough yet fish except for the two larger clown loaches, which I doubt can produce enough considering the water volume..
 
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A few years back I did an experiment on the window sill. I put two bowls with salvinia in it. I dosed one excessively and the other one was not dosed. Both got water from my tank, not even the tap. The salvinia in the dosed bowl grew like crazy, looked great too. The salvinia in the non-dosed bowl didn't even multiply enough to cover the water surface properly. The plants were stunted, very light green and the leaves were tiny, exactly as I see them right now in my tank. The dosed bowl developed thick green algae on the glass at first which one day just fell off completely to the bottom of the bowl....when the nutrient levels dropped...

The bowls sat next to each other, getting light only from the window..I kept the salvinia in the nutrient loaded bowl alive for a while as it was the only one left from the aforementioned soil tank above...I just wanted to have some on hand to put back in when I need it...But one can't grow floaters all the time if you're aiming at lean water column...not if you're changing plenty of water and do not dose much of nutrients to replace the removed. I go by the TDS meter...I don't let the TDS rise even after years of the tank being set up. Ask around others about their TDS readings.....most people keep their tank water very rich...their tank's water by a factor of over 2x the TDS of tap...I keep my tanks very lean. I barely have any TDS rise..As I mentioned once, my plants were really happy when I stopped doing water changes in one of my tanks...but my fish got sick...The emersed plants grew huge at the time and were flowering like crazy non-stop....not a sign of healthy water column in my opinion but its nice to see :)
 
Most floaters are light hogs and with that obviously also fert hogs too. The Hygroryza arista is next to that also a bit temperatur sensitive plant.. I yet not managed to grow it outdoor in the summer getting full sunlight as floater. Probably still haven't been warm enough till now. But emersed non floating in substrate as grassy plant it grew very good, but died (indoors) last winter. :)

Interesting you had this experience with the hygroryza Marcel, as it did really well for me in a small tub last summer. It was in a pretty shady area but grew quite well. I live in Norfolk so we aren't renowned for warmth.
 
Interesting you had this experience with the hygroryza Marcel, as it did really well for me in a small tub last summer. It was in a pretty shady area but grew quite well. I live in Norfolk so we aren't renowned for warmth.
That's why i love this hobby so much.. We often can only wonder why and never realy know the real truth behind it. Little different combinations can have drastic impacts.

Thanks for sharing, makes me keep trying. Last summer was a realy bad one in our region, lots of dark, cold wet days.. Many plants which usualy thrive didn't do much at all. I use to have tons of flowers in the garden and last year it was rather dull, not much was willing to make a flower at all. Who knows what this year will bring.. :)
 
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