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Wonderful Proserpinaca palusstris cuba

H..

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Joined
4 Oct 2011
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257
Location
Alnö
I have this wonderful Proserpinaca palustris (pp), but the leafs are curling and the plant seems to be dying. I have it in two tanks and in the hightech tank with pressurised CO2 and 2watts per liter it is not thriving, but in the lowlight tank 0,3w per liter it is growing slowly (naturaly).

It goes together with HC and it is growing good and bubbling. bot the pp is not

I fertilize with tropicas N P K micro daily, and extra PMDD every waterchange (40%) weekly.

What is this plant lack of?

pp2.jpg

pp1.jpg


H.
 
The Hemiathus callitricoides is bubbling like champagne. and in the lowtech lowlight aquarium it looks like it is supposed to (secod picture).

So lack of CO2 ? I dont thik.

cheers

H.
 
The Hemiathus callitricoides is bubbling like champagne. and in the lowtech lowlight aquarium it looks like it is supposed to (secod picture).

So lack of CO2 ? I dont thik.

cheers

H.

Wont the low tech have lower lighting? If so, take a look again. Co2 makes perfect sense.
 
I would go easy on the potassium you are adding, maybe switch potassium nitrate for magnesium nitrate for instance. Try this and see...it worked for me with rotala macaranda, and ludwigia arcuata, which I am now successfully growing in moderately hard tapwater. I now add daily lean magnesium nitrate and tiny, like max 0.2ppm k from potassium phosphate, any more and it'll start seeing slight distortion in new leaves. I see some pinholes in hydrocotyle old leaves from keeping the k lean, but I'd have this any day over twisted up warped rotala or ludwigia.

I think some plants show symptoms of excessive K in that they cannot properly assimilate calcium uptake, as such the new cell walls of the growing leaf structures that rely on calcium to form properly get distorted / deformed. I've seen this effect mainly on 'softwater' adapted species when grown in harder water, ie they are not adapted to cope with excess potassium in the water and soak it up like a sponge, but to the detriment of the plants regulatory nutrient needs. Most plants won't show this effect and will grow monstrously well in accordance with the estimative index.

The problem with my suggestion is it flies in the face of the estimative index mantra that more k cannot cause problems, I think it does for certain species. Please try going easier on the K and see.

cheers Gary
 
The droppchecker is from light yellow to light green depending on time of day.
I am dosing 24/7 with Co2.

Wont the low tech have lower lighting? If so, take a look again. Co2 makes perfect sense.
explain to me please.

H.
 
I dose per week 10ml of these ingredients from an 500 ml bottle
40ml KN03
8 ml KH2PO4
5 ml K2S04
25ml MiPlus

And an extra 3ml dry powder of MGSO4 with every waterchange. to make Ca/Mg ratio 4:1

H
 
I'd be really interested to see if you get an improvement in the growth of the proserpernica if you switch KNO3 for MgNO3, drop the sulphate (unless your water is devoid of sulphates) and lower the amount of Potassium Phosphate by dosing daily, way smaller amounts - 0.2ppm say. The point being to ensure that K is constantly present but at quantities that does not impinge on Calcium uptake / assimilation.
 
Here is Proserpinaca palusstris in a tank dosed with 60ppm K+. The theory of K+ poisoning is a not really valid. As discussed in earlier threads the problem with a limiting nutrient is that the addition of other nutrients increases the demand for the that which is being limited. Adding more NPK exposes the fact that Carbon is poor. If any of the NPK are limited, then adding more carbon increases the nutrient demand, and therefore exposes the fact that NPK are limited. Some soft water plants have difficulty in high conductivity water. Lowering the nutrient input will also lower the conductivity.

Structural failure in aquatic plants is cause by poor allocation of Carbon because it is the carbon that builds structure, not Calcium. The Calcium requirement of plants are very low, but the carbon requirements are extremely high. 40% of the plant's dry mass is Carbon. The OP has too much light, which causes an exceedence in the Carbon uptake demand. That's why his tank with less light produces a healthier plant that the one which has excessive light. People almost always assume that their CO2 is sufficient and that their problems lie elsewhere, when in actual fact good CO2 is very difficult to achieve. Simply reducing the light intensity, or increasing the CO2, or both will solve this problem.

Also, Ca/Mg ratios are completely irrelevant as shown by the issues with this plant. It is always a waste of time to micromanage ratios, because first of all, one cannot measure them accurately, and secondly, the plant may not uptake each element at the same ratio as that which is dosed. That's why there is an EI mantra, to keep people from complicating their lives unnecessarily.
800x600


Cheers,
 
Like I say H, just try it and see, I've pretty much maxed out CO2 chasing and exploring the above with respect to the science posed but still witnessed deformed plants. I've also seen the same plants switch from distorted, growing, but very distorted and downright ugly, to perfectly formed by maintaining the same light, same high CO2 but going way easier on the potassium. No harm giving it a shot...

cheers Gary
 
I've read that plants don't have a mechanical mechanism for calcium uptake, that it is by diffusion alone. So the rate of diffusion of calcium through the plant, in the case of the high tech tank, where there are no limits in the availability of nutrients, just the assimilation of them, could be considered a limiting factor in structurally perfect growth.

That is, if there is no concentration limit on growth caused by light, CO2, other macros then the only real limit is the speed of diffusion on calcium through the plant. Basically the calcium ion can't get there in time! This also supports the idea of how the effect is not seen when lower light levels prevent the growth rate surpassing the point where this effect is seen - the rate of growth fits the diffusion rate of the calcium to the growing point.

These plants must be able to transport calcium through the xylem to the growing tip (rather than purely diffusion at the leaf tip) because the same plants are capable of growing emergent leaves (no immediate source of calcium). I put forward the idea that the effect of twisted leaves is seen as plants get closer to the light source because, as light energy increases, growth can become limited by the rate at which the calcium can diffuse to the growing point. I further put forward the idea that high concentrations of potassium makes the ability for the calcium to be in the right place at the right time is made even harder.

This is being put forward based on what I've observed and the changes I've made in conclusion to those observations that have resulted in nice growth where once it was well ugly.
 
NH4--- under 0,1ppm.
No3 --- 1,0 ppm
Po4 --- more than 3ppm
I took some tests tonight to find out where it is going:
NH4 is low as expected, i have only amanos in there
NO3 was verylow indeed
And PO4 was unexpectevly high.

H.
 
Hi,
Well there are two basic types of uptake mechanisms, and active channel, which means there is a specific protein dedicated to attracting and transporting the target nutrient across the outer cell membrane, and there is the passive channel which normally works through diffusion. Many nutrient uptake pathways have both types of channels. There are even different protein channels that function based on low availability of the nutrient as well as high availability. So the physiology of the plant changes in terms of protein distribution across the leaf based on what nutrients are present in the water and in what concentration. As you mentioned Ca++ only has the single passive diffusion method. As the leaf grows, so does the surface of the leaf, so even given limits of diffusion rates, there is more available contact area for the Ca++ ion to diffuse through. However, once inside the plant there is a system of Ca++ transport within the leaf that is very efficient and very quick. There are transporters located in the vacuole, in the cytoplasm, and in the endoplasmic reticulum. So Ca++ moves around within the leaf very quickly but cannot leave the leaf. Ca++ tends to remain in the leaf and actually builds up to possibly toxic levels because it is also used to modulate the turgidity of cell walls. The problem with Ca++ for plants has far more to do controlling toxicity because of the lack of intra-leaf mobility and the buildup. Calcium failure in the leaf should more likely appear as disintegration of the cell walls, which should more resemble melting or mushiness that deformation, because it part of every cell.

The rate of diffusion of any nutrient across the cell walls always have a pathway. If it's not through a major artery like the xylem/phloem then it will be through some other chemical pathway. Under photonic duress all pathways are stressed, and nutrient delivery of all micronutrients are stifled because they are not very mobile and do not have access to the preferred arterial pathways. That is one reason, for example, that micronutrient deficiency is almost always noted more readily on new growth, because the nutrient has no pathway for redistribution from old leaves to new leaves. On the other hand, Carbon and NPK are extremely mobile, and so failure in these areas tend to characterized by degradation of older leaves first or all leaves simultaneously as the plants attempt to redistribute the nutrient to the new growing leaves.

The problem with carbon failure is that carbon is so important, it is everywhere and in every system in the plant, and so carbon failures take a hundred different shapes from distorted structure to transparency, holes and rotting. Carbon failure look like a lot of different things. But Calcium also has a lot of different appearance depending on the plant because it's used in a variety of ways. It's actually quite rare to see a Calcium deficiency because the usage rate is so small. Also, a lot of the data comes from terrestrial plants and may not apply to aquatics.

There is always a probability that the plant suffers K+ toxicity, however, I get nice growth too and my tanks are always loaded with K+, so what I'm saying is that my observations lead me to believe that it can't be as straightforward as only having too much K+. From a methodology standpoint, my inclination would be first to address the most common cause. As I mentioned, people assume that their CO2 is good just because the DC is green. They automatically assume that the plant needs light, so they set up a situation where the plant fails due to excessive lighting and most times it turns out that it is the Carbon processing that can't get it there in time. People assume that a green dropchecker is automatic evidence of 30ppm, which is not true for the plant. Deep in the plant beds the amount of Aqueous CO2 reaching the leaves is only 10% of what the free water column has. That's why I'm always skeptical of claims that CO2 is good. It happens far more frequently that the hobbyist does not explore the limits of CO2 sufficiently. So that's why I suggest to first remove the light intensity just to see if reduction of PAR (which folks almost never try, let alone talk about) is an easier fix. :)

Cheers,
 
Totally agree with you about getting the CO2 right as much as you can, and that the majority of issues will be carbon related. I'm also aware that there are many variables at play that should cause us to be careful when making any conclusions based on our observations, and I've very respectfully read every piece of literature I can find in relation to this particular instance and still not been convinced that carbon availability is all there is to it.

I'm putting forward the suggestion to try lowering K as I've found it works really well for me, not in theory, but in practice in high light / CO2 situations. If it works for the Op too, I'd be very interested to know. If it doesn't work, then hey ho, I have some quirky one off factors that work for me, and I won't bang on about it, unless someone asks!

cheers
 
Woow, that was some writing! This will take me the whole day to read and understand (since my english is not exellent, im scandinavian) all the technical terms. Thank you very much and I will consider CO2 lack or even taking away some light.

H.
 
wow your 1st photo looks very bad. On second one the plant look strong, but the color is pale. So that still not in good condition too.

Here is with ATI light 4x39W over on our earlier 180L tank. Soft water, co2 diffuser, EI fert, low pH - becuse of Malaya, e.carbo daily dose

5664226636_023b80e98f_z.jpg


5663655483_d6bc47710d_z.jpg
 
I have this wonderful Proserpinaca palustris (pp), but the leafs are curling and the plant seems to be dying. I have it in two tanks and in the hightech tank with pressurised CO2 and 2watts per liter it is not thriving, but in the lowlight tank 0,3w per liter it is growing slowly (naturaly).

It goes together with HC and it is growing good and bubbling. bot the pp is not

I fertilize with tropicas N P K micro daily, and extra PMDD every waterchange (40%) weekly.

What is this plant lack of?

H.


This is a light demanding plant as i've seen

wow your 1st photo looks very bad. On second one the plant look strong, but the color is pale. So that still not in good condition too.

Here is with ATI light 4x39W over on our earlier 180L tank. Soft water, co2 diffuser, EI fert, low pH - becuse of Malaya, e.carbo daily dose

I'd doubt it's light related, the op has 2w per litre, more than double the amount of light you have over that tank, which also suggests it may be a co2 issue as 2w per litre is a lot of light......how high above the water it is may have an influence though? Hc is a carpet plant so par will be lower at the substrate which may explain its success?
 
Light and co 2 are linked. Addressing light would the first thing on my list. Cut light for a week, see what happens.
 
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