I will do tomorrow. Believe it or not, all those bad leaves are in the last 7 days, when I last did some maintenance and I’ve just not had time to do anything. The damage has accelerated. I’m also going to put cucumber in as @dw1305 suggested.
You havent by any chance spot dosed glutaraldehyde/excel when you did that?
Just add iron (Fe), you only need to add about 0.5 ppm, but you will need a chelator that works at higher pH levels. I might try the <"pink tint method"> and <"Chempak Sequestered Iron"> would be a possible source of FeEDDHA.
Seven days!?... I don't think I've ever seen that level of plant deterioration (assuming it was healthy before) in such a short time span without some pretty obvious mistakes being committed - which I doubt happened in this case, but I obviously do not know... I think this mystery amounts to more than a run-of-the-mill Fe deficiency and a bored Ancistrus.
Lol, I doubt that bba apeard in only seven days 😅
No, I don’t use gluteraldehyde.
Thank you. I assume if my pH is 7 or below I can use EDTA chelated?
I started adding Mg again 2 weeks ago. I’d stopped using it as I originally had an EI recipe without and hadn’t noticed any improvements when I started using Mg. My plant mass was smaller then. I also changed some of my filter media to help improve flow, that was also two weeks ago. Work was crazy in the run up to Christmas and and I’d missed a few water changes - hence the built up organic sand probably resulting bba. Apart from that, no other changes.
I meant the actual leaf damage, not the bba.
Mg is an essential nutrient. If you're using tap water your very likely already very low on Mg in your neck of the woods... But the lack of Mg might not be the whole root cause if you plants was doing well for a long time before and it's something you just started adding and then stopped - unless that triggered a some sort of cold turkey effect in the plants (?).
Missing a few WCs shouldn't be a problem unless your really tethering on the edge of way too much waste buildup or serious lack of essential nutrients.... It is an injected tank thus forced high metabolic rate, so perhaps.
You can.
I'd guess it was a magnesium (Mg) deficiency. Because magnesium is mobile within the plant as soon as you add it the plant can move it to older leaf tissues etc.
I think you may be right. I did a big trim today to remove all the affected leaves and in doing so I noticed just how dense they had become. I suspect there were challenges with nutrition to the leaves a result. I wonder if in future I also need to trim them just to stop them getting so dense.
Hi @hypnogogia Well, I suppose when the plants starts choking under the weight of their own growth you can either trim, or possibly borrow time by making sure you get more nutrients in and around the plants. What I've done in instances when I saw signs of deficiencies around dense plants (that I couldn't reasonably attribute to a certain mineral being in short supply) was to prop up my flow around the bottom of the tanks with some small internal pumps such as this Pat Mini (I currently have two in each of my 150L tanks - just enough to stir things around and very easy to hide as well) and that really helped in my case. But at some point you have to face the inevitable.... One of my Swords is absolutely outgrowing one of my tanks (picture below - its massive) - I haven't figured out what I want to do about the situation yet. I am very much a softie when it comes to trimming of perfectly healthy leaves.
I gave up with bleheri and removed them from my tank with ancistrus as they just ended up a mess with loads of holes in them.
Hard to say mate. I have two ancistrus and mine generaly seem to go after less healthy plant leaves, my usual rule of thumb is to leave at least one damaged leaf on the plant and use that as a sacrificial offering, once this leaf shows any signs of melting or rotting it gets removed. They'll eventually find another leaf to graze on but I can afford to lose a leaf every couple of weeks.
I took off all the melting ones and no new ones have appeared. My current stock of ferts will be used up this weekend, and then I’ll make up a mix with more iron and phosphate.
For whatever reason they are definitely the preferred plant for Ancistrus to graze on.
Rather than remove them, personally I would ignore the damage and just let the Bristlenose get on with it as well.
