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What am I doing wrong!? - Help

Sammy Islam

Member
Joined
12 Mar 2019
Messages
692
Location
Hertfordshire
Hey peeps, it's getting to the point where i'm going crazy trying to figure out how to fix my deficiency! Plants grew really well for 1.5 months and then i've been defficiant ever since, probably iron - maybe my plants used up the ferts i need from the substrate that couldn't be accessed from the water?

I've dosed full EI from day 2 and do 75% water change once a week. I've tried a couple of different things in the past 1.5 months, leaving 2 weeks in between each change to observe and evaluate. But not much has changed and it's starting to annoy me! :banghead::lol:

I have tried:
1) 1.5x EI
2) dosing separate iron in DTPA form 3x a week with my micro doses. (0.2 EDTA from APF micro, 0.2 DTPA)
3) tried dosing 0.1 DTPA a day
4) tried daily dosing macro and micro some hours apart (i think that actually helped even though its "sacrelige")

So that lead me to:
5) bought some tnc complete and dosed 20ml a day
6) added 0.1 DTPA a day on top of tnc complete as i assume it has ferrous iron because it's green?

Still i am defficiant in something and can't work it out! Luckily i dont have any major algae problems apart from diatoms and green algae on my rocks but this is easily managed during maintenance and a little bit of staghorn on the taller old pinnatafida leaves.

My water parameters are:
PH 7.2 (straight out tap)
PH 7.9 degassed
PH 6.9-7.0 during co2 (weekly calibrated PH pen)
GH 21/22
KH 12/13
Temp 24c (got rams)
CA 130mg/l + whatever the 20kg seiryu stone adds
MG unknown but i would assume 0-5ppm
I add 10ppm mgso47h20 during water change.

At first i thought it could just be the rotala prefers softer water than i have and has a hard time finding/using iron when theres th much CA. But then it doesn't make sense for the anubias, s.repens and p.helferi.
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Hey @Sammy Islam I'm not really sure if there is any problem with r. rotundifolia - it may be converting from chlorophyll to carotenoids while getting closer to the light source (but that's only my guess). What exactly do you dose? Frankly speaking "1.5x EI" tells nothing about the amounts of ferts you use.

Another two things may be lack of Mg or Fe which are common for yellowing leaves.
 
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What is your mix mate how much of each salt are you putting in to.the bottle and how are you reaching the required amounts of each
 
Hey @Sammy Islam I'm not really sure if there is any problem with r. rotundifolia - it may be converting from chlorophyll to carotenoids while getting closer to the light source (but that's only my guess). What exactly do you dose? Frankly speaking "1.5x EI" tells nothing about the amounts of ferts you use.

Another two things may be lack of Mg or Fe which are common for yellowing leaves.
What is your mix mate how much of each salt are you putting in to.the bottle and how are you reaching the required amounts of each

Well all the rotala tips are very pale, the photo makes it look better than it is. The rotala in the middle is sp green, which is very pale and not green.

First 1.5 months started off with:
No3 18ppm
Po4 3.5ppm
k 25ppm
Mg. 10ppm

0.6 FE EDTA APF trace
0.6 FE DTPA

After things started going downhill i increased the dose by 50% with my left over mix and saw some improvement so i made a new batch which was a little stronger than my original recipe.

500ml - 40ml dose
30g kno3
4.5g kh2po4
20g k2so4

No3 28ppm
Po4 4.5ppm
K. 32ppm
Mg 10ppm

500ml - 40ml dose
5.5g APF trace
9g DTPA FE 8%

0.6 FE EDTA APF trace
0.9 FE DPTA

Now trying daily tnc complete to see if it improves things, the total for the week would be around:
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I.dont.see how it can be a deficiency your hitting all the numbers mate I'd add some more MGSO4 half way through the week it's amazing how much it can bring out the greens but other than that I cant see anything wrong with the mix
 
I.dont.see how it can be a deficiency your hitting all the numbers mate I'd add some more MGSO4 half way through the week it's amazing how much it can bring out the greens but other than that I cant see anything wrong with the mix

I add 3tsp during water change to give me 10ppm, when dosing tnc complete it also gives me another 1ppm each dose bringing me to 16ppm a week. Daily dosing 0.1ppm DTPA daily iron on top means i should have more than enough iron available as my PH is 6.9-7.0 during photoperiod. I'm so confused i don't know what else to try as my greens are deffo not green, look at my p.helferi it's so pale.
 
I had the same issue when I did my.first couple of tanks and ceg32 told me to.double my MGSO4 and it worked all of a sudden every thing was green I'm not saying do that all I'm saying is adding a bit more of something isnt going to hurt instead of just aiming for the numbers it might just be you need another half teaspoon to get it the tank through the week its not going to hurt as it will be reset at the end of the week
 
You probably have very hard water being in Hertfordshire. I’d also recommend what @Jayefc1 has and add double the amount of magnesium. I also used to get similar issues to yourself, plants do great at start up and then after a month or two deteriorate. I upped my magnesium and these issues seem to have gone thankfully. I also changed my iron dosing to EDDHA rather than DTPA, both work in a higher PH but I believe EDDHA May be less sensitive to light. Only issue is it makes your water slightly pinkish before the plants use it up!

cheers

Conor
 
I had the same issue when I did my.first couple of tanks and ceg32 told me to.double my MGSO4 and it worked all of a sudden every thing was green I'm not saying do that all I'm saying is adding a bit more of something isnt going to hurt instead of just aiming for the numbers it might just be you need another half teaspoon to get it the tank through the week its not going to hurt as it will be reset at the end of the week

Thanks I'll try double mg on my next water change and observe, as you say im hitting all the right numbers so i can't be far off in general.

You probably have very hard water being in Hertfordshire. I’d also recommend what @Jayefc1 has and add double the amount of magnesium. I also used to get similar issues to yourself, plants do great at start up and then after a month or two deteriorate. I upped my magnesium and these issues seem to have gone thankfully. I also changed my iron dosing to EDDHA rather than DTPA, both work in a higher PH but I believe EDDHA May be less sensitive to light. Only issue is it makes your water slightly pinkish before the plants use it up!

cheers

Conor

I was thinking about using EDDHA, i messaged zeus about the deficiency as he's solved his using it. But surely my ph being 7 during photoperiod means my daily dose of DTPA is available to the plants, so maybe mg is the problem. I've made up a new batch of DTPA to see if it makes any difference as i was using TNC DTPA iron, but it may have degraded over time.
 
It's just a case of trial.and error maybe the MG will work maybe it wont but either way its not going.to hurt anything even if its 20ppm its nothing compared to the amount of water in there and like I said it's going to be reset when you do your water change
If you see an improvment over a couple of week great if not move on to iron have you got root tabs in there if not get some of the neo ones from.AG there really good I put loads in my set ups especially the iron ones
 
It's just a case of trial.and error maybe the MG will work maybe it wont but either way its not going.to hurt anything even if its 20ppm its nothing compared to the amount of water in there and like I said it's going to be reset when you do your water change
If you see an improvment over a couple of week great if not move on to iron have you got root tabs in there if not get some of the neo ones from.AG there really good I put loads in my set ups especially the iron ones

Yeah that's true especially with all the CA makes sense. I just put in an extra 2tsp :thumbup: will double up on maintenance sunday :)

I did add some root tabs on start up but only what i had left over, so probably wasn't loads. I'll definitely get some more and load up when i do a big trim.
 
Thanks I'll try double mg on my next water change and observe, as you say im hitting all the right numbers so i can't be far off in general.



I was thinking about using EDDHA, i messaged zeus about the deficiency as he's solved his using it. But surely my ph being 7 during photoperiod means my daily dose of DTPA is available to the plants, so maybe mg is the problem. I've made up a new batch of DTPA to see if it makes any difference as i was using TNC DTPA iron, but it may have degraded over time.
I mean it should be, the issue I had with DTPA is that the bottle I kept it in was clear. It was stored in a dark cupboard but not even sure if the brief exposure every couple of days to dose was causing it to breakdown. So I thought I’d give the EDDHA a try instead. I got it from solufeed and was dirt cheap so was worth doing.

See how you go with the magnesium, hopefully it does the trick.

cheers

Conor
 
I mean it should be, the issue I had with DTPA is that the bottle I kept it in was clear. It was stored in a dark cupboard but not even sure if the brief exposure every couple of days to dose was causing it to breakdown. So I thought I’d give the EDDHA a try instead. I got it from solufeed and was dirt cheap so was worth doing.

See how you go with the magnesium, hopefully it does the trick.

cheers

Conor

I've got mine in my cupboard in a translucent bottle hooked up to auto-doser. I'll try the extra mg and new mix of daily iron and see if it makes any difference in the next week or two. I'll order the solufeed or the chempak sequestered iron soon and cross my fingers ;)

Ps. Just realised this thread is in the wrong section, @Tim Harrison please could you move it over to the ferts section :thumbup:

Thanks
 
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