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Phosphate deficiency?

Nikola

Nikola

Member
Joined
9 May 2020
Messages
182
Location
Slovakia
Hello guys,
Can someone please look at the images and confirm my suspicion of phosphate deficiency? I know it's written already a lot about this subject, but I need some advice.

Its 112liter aquarium. Month and half old.

lights are 4x24w t5 with slowly dimming up and down trough the day.
I have 1200lph filter plus 400lph pump inside of aquarium which is also braking co2 bubbles and they are all over aquarium,I'm using around 10bps CO2.
Dosing tropica specialised 18ml per day.

I was tweaking alot with co2,and I think that I can say it's stable and with super flow trough whole water column.
Also I'm dosing excel 2x recommended dose daily.

All my algae are now gone,minimum. Only I started seeing some GSA.

with my tropica dose I'm adding around 1,2 ppm of P.

Yesterday I have started adding 2ppm more of P per week.

I'm I heading in good direction?
Also should I'm dosing P in the evening, should I dose it in the morning?
1000001189.jpg

1000001187.jpg


1000001190.jpg
 
I don't see any signs of phosphorus deficiency either.
 
dw1305 said:
Hi all,

They look pretty healthy to me and not noticeably deficient in anything.

Cheers Darrel
Click to expand...
Hi Darrel, please take a look one more time cause I can see some leaves have brown edges, here I have marked some leaves.
20231126_105830.jpg
 
In an aquarium, phosphorus deficiency is quite difficult to detect. I cannot confirm what agricultural literature says about darker green colour etc. In my experience, plants suffering from (partial) lack of phosphorus grow slowly and tend to create smaller leaves, which otherwise look normal.

You point to leaf edges. Their appearance makes me recall that leaf edges are often spots where internal liquids leak into the water column. Such spots attract microbes, both bacteria and algae. Bacterial colonies then may alter the coloration of such spots.
 
_Maq_ said:
You point to leaf edges. Their appearance makes me recall that leaf edges are often spots where internal liquids leak into the water column. Such spots attract microbes, both bacteria and algae. Bacterial colonies then may alter the coloration of such spots.
Click to expand...
You got a point here, and @GHNelson you also got a point, maybe it's all gonna stop after some time.
I will stay consistent with parameters as much as I can to alow them adapt completely.
Phosphate I think I will continue dosing for few weeks just to see is it gonna change something(bad or good).
 
Nikola said:
You got a point here, and @GHNelson you also got a point, maybe it's all gonna stop after some time.
I will stay consistent with parameters as much as I can to alow them adapt completely.
Phosphate I think I will continue dosing for few weeks just to see is it gonna change something(bad or good).
Click to expand...
If it is Lobelia cardinalis.....slow grower!
www.flowgrow.de

Lobelia cardinalis 'Kleine Form' - Dwarf Cardinal flower

Lobelia cardinalis 'small form' is a very interesting cultivar of the larger-growing standard form of L. cardinalis. It can be discerned from the latter by its rounder, coin-shaped leaves and the far smaller overall stature. Up to now, only...
www.flowgrow.de www.flowgrow.de
 
GHNelson said:
If it is Lobelia cardinalis.....slow grower!
Click to expand...
It is lobelia, slow grower, cause of that I wanna have good and consistent parameters from beginning, to not tweak it later on and cause old leaves to get destroyed.
 
_Maq_ said:
In an aquarium, phosphorus deficiency is quite difficult to detect. I cannot confirm what agricultural literature says about darker green colour etc. In my experience, plants suffering from (partial) lack of phosphorus grow slowly and tend to create smaller leaves, which otherwise look normal.

You point to leaf edges. Their appearance makes me recall that leaf edges are often spots where internal liquids leak into the water column. Such spots attract microbes, both bacteria and algae. Bacterial colonies then may alter the coloration of such spots.
Click to expand...
Experienced this once with some Hygrophila Corymbosa. Leaves started decreasing in size, got much much darker than usual and in the end stunned completely. Soon after all plants just stopped growing. Had GSA appearing. API P tests showed 0ppm. Once bumped the P after week or two everything started to recover. In my case leaf colour and GSA helped to diagnose the problem.
 
Hi guys,
Little update.

So I have added 2ppm of phosphate in dosing.
Those brown edges are now better but I'm geting green spot algae on some leaves of Lobelia.

Some advice what to do to make it go away?
Maybe to much nutrients in the water?
 
Nikola said:
So I have added 2ppm of phosphate in dosing.
Those brown edges are now better but I'm geting green spot algae on some leaves of Lobelia.
Click to expand...
High phosphate dosing is often touted as the solution to green spot algae, and it's true, it does work. If you ramp up the phosphate dosing, eventually you'll hit a level where the green spot algae dies. However, I and some other members of the forum believe that this is a secondary effect, and not a primary one. I've successfully got rid of green spot algae before by reducing iron dosing. I believe that high phosphate may be binding excess free iron.
 
xZaiox said:
However, I and some other members of the forum believe that this is a secondary effect, and not a primary one. I've successfully got rid of green spot algae before by reducing iron dosing. I believe that high phosphate may be binding excess free iron
Click to expand...
Hi, I'm aware of this. I will try upping it a bit more over some period.
Also I think it can be that phosphate is pushing the plants to soak up more nutrients, so maybe that also contribute to lower iron levels. 🤔
 
Nikola said:
Hello guys,
Can someone please look at the images and confirm my suspicion of phosphate deficiency? I know it's written already a lot about this subject, but I need some advice.

Its 112liter aquarium. Month and half old.

lights are 4x24w t5 with slowly dimming up and down trough the day.
I have 1200lph filter plus 400lph pump inside of aquarium which is also braking co2 bubbles and they are all over aquarium,I'm using around 10bps CO2.
Dosing tropica specialised 18ml per day.

I was tweaking alot with co2,and I think that I can say it's stable and with super flow trough whole water column.
Also I'm dosing excel 2x recommended dose daily.

All my algae are now gone,minimum. Only I started seeing some GSA.

with my tropica dose I'm adding around 1,2 ppm of P.

Yesterday I have started adding 2ppm more of P per week.

I'm I heading in good direction?
Also should I'm dosing P in the evening, should I dose it in the morning?
Click to expand...

Just a thought... If you're dosing 18 ml of Tropica specialized daily(!?) your accumulating a heck of a lot Nitrogen even if your doing a weekly 50% WC. For a 112 liter tank that is like 15 ppm of N (which from Specialized comes from Ammonium Nitrate - NH4NO3 ) ... roughly equivalent to dosing 70 ppm of NO3 .... thats a lot! Considering this tank is only 6 weeks old, I wonder if those browning leaf edges could be due to something to the effect of "fertilizer burn"? What say you @dw1305 / @_Maq_ ?

Cheers,
Michael
 
Last edited:
MichaelJ said:
For a 112 liter tank that is like 15 ppm of N (which from Specialized comes from Ammonium Nitrate - NH4NO3 ) ... roughly equivalent to dosing 70 ppm of NO3 .... thats a lot!
Click to expand...
What did you just say to me? I was totally unaware that there is a difference between those two. Even I was thinking that I have low nitrate for montecarlo(15ppm), wanted to put it around 20ppm.
Wow
Okay, so my aquarium somehow got used to that amount of ferts.
1000001558.jpg

1000001534.jpg

1000001535.jpg

What to do now? You think I should go lower with tropica?
I was doing calculation for EI daily with rotala calculator, and that is what it recommends.
When I was doing 8ml per day I had all kind of deficiency...
 
MichaelJ said:
What say you @dw1305 / @_Maq_ ?
Click to expand...
I've never experimented systematically with extreme dosing. I believe that Michaelis-Menten kinetics for nutrients uptake are well established in the science. I'm aware that many would disagree, but for me, everything above approx. 10 mg/L NO3 or 10 mg/L CO2 is only mess or even worse mess. I'm not interested in exploring those realms.
 
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