Health of my plants. Problematic alternathera reinekii

[Kostas]

A huge problem I see is people thinking that if a plant has long roots, then the plant can be moved and the roots still work. Well not really. The thick roots that we can easily see are conduits. They don't do much nutrient absorption. Nutrient uptake happens through almost invisible capillary roots that are thinner than hair. They extend and attach to substrate. This process takes a while and every time we upset it, it has to be redone almost from scratch. If you tug on a stem plant with a large root network, you just broke off thousands of micro connections and made it bleed plant blood into the substrate. This is why we see people in videos chopping off roots. It's almost easier for the plant to establish a new root system than to fix a damaged existing one. Extending roots costs the plant stored nutrients. If it doesn't have a rhyzome or bulb or fleshy parts to store those nutrients, making it renew roots too often will kill it. So that's why planning a layout is very important. Because changing it is very taxing to plants, stressful to fish and leads to long recovery times where our aquaria do not look "optimal".

both of your comments are honestly ,if not the most helpful I've read though all the forums I'm a member , one of the most helpful . this makes so much sense . i will keep your advice as a rule. thank you

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[Kostas]

please have another look. I corrected the lighting period to 6 hours and managed to make the aquamedic 1000 to work correctly. apparently I had to readjust the setting cause it needs more co2 than the glass diffuser. the drop checker is more yellow than it seems on the video. I just think I need one more pump to increase circulation a bit, the most powerful I had is now connected to the co2 reactor. I had a pretty severe case of diatoms and the last 4 days they almost died out completely . the system is gradually becoming more stable. have a look at the alternatheras I see some new growth but nothing special. the grass is starting to grow like crazy too.any advice would be greatly appreciated

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[Mihai Varban]

Diatoms are the first algae 99% of us see. I personally cut some straight patterns into a diatom stain to see if it spreads or if it's dead, cos dead and living diatom colonies look alike. After diatoms green algae comes and goes when plants take over. CO2 is usually the bottleneck in any tank without CO2. Without CO2, a mature tank will have an EXCESS of certain nutrients. Usually nitrate. Plants will not be able to eat it quickly enough because they lack CO2, strong light, phosphates, potassium, magnesium, iron and traces (in almost this order). That's why you dose EI. So they always have enough of something. The nitrate phosphate ratio is 10:1. If less, plants wallow in excess nutrients they can't use. Algae can however. This is why what you read about a lowtech setup is not true for high tech.
Plants also secrete some substances through their roots of leaves making other plants or algae have difficulty in growing near them. Hairgrass roots will secrete a chemical that will kill other plants, if it accumulates in large amounts, elodea releases anti algae chemicals into your water and certain plants just straight kill some of their neighbors. With a high tech, high maintenance setup where you change your water with RO/DI remineralized water, maintain high circulation and aerate substrate with loads of vacuuming, you may not get to witness the effect in full. Whatever the case, enforcing your will over nature is costly in terms of effort and money.
While experienced aquarists can read their plants and fish for deficiencies or elements in high amounts, it's best to let nature run its course for a while, just because nature will eliminate some of your problems for you, with time. Personally, I'd dial the CO2 closer to blue than yellow, but still towards the green, cut back on ferts, do water changes only in case of massive ammonia or nitrite spikes and spend some quality time watching Pondguru's video on setting up a filter, order and read Diana Walstad book (costly but worth it), watch some videos on Co2 setup and dialing in (a guy called The Water Box makes sense, councils patience and read everything our own Clive (ceg4048 on the "Notable members" tab) has to say on ferts. If you're already familiar with what I said, I don't mean to sound patronising, just sharing.