S. Repens issue

[Supermassive]

So some of my S. repens has some holes and yellowing on the leaves but all the new growth looks very good. Its only been in the tank about a month. I don't know if its just adjusting to the new water parameters or if there's a nutrient deficiency. It kind of seems like a nutrient deficiency but all the new growth looks good so I'm not sure. If you have a nutrient deficiency will the new growth still look healthy? 

I should have mentioned this. I dose easy green at least once a week and my nitrates are currently around 30ppm. I also put 3 root tabs just under the S. repens less than a month ago.

[TheSwissAquarist]

They seem to do better in co2 rich water.

@Mmiller2001

[Mmiller2001]

If the tops are looking good, stick with what you’re doing and eventually you can top and replant. I’ve personally failed with this plant even with CO2. 

[Supermassive]

@Mmiller2001 Okay thanks. Oh wow, I thought it was a beginner plant. Tropica considers it a beginner plant. I've read that if you really want a nice carpet you will probably need CO2 but I thought it would still be easy to grow without it and it just wouldn't be as dense or grow as fast. Hopefully the new growth stays healthy. Thanks for the info.

[Mmiller2001]

For many, it’s easy. I can’t grow Java ferns either.

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 9/30/2023 at 9:04 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

For many, it’s easy. I can’t grow Java ferns either.

That sounds a bit weird coming from the guy who has an epic rainbow tank…😜

[nabokovfan87]

On 9/30/2023 at 12:04 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

I can’t grow Java ferns either.

I keep trying to grow the non-aquatic version of bolbitus fern because it's "supposed to work". It's just sort of there. It's basically defeated me when it comes to all ferns. 😞

On 9/30/2023 at 11:22 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

If the tops are looking good, stick with what you’re doing and eventually you can top and replant. I’ve personally failed with this plant even with CO2. 

S. Repens can be so finicky!!!

I've had mine doing well, stop growing for months because I had to move the tank 4 feet to the left. Nothing changed, no modification of settings, just stopped on me.

What I found out was that my GH:KH ratio went upside down and the nutrients were a bit wonky.

Overall, the plant looks good, but there's just a bad leaf here and there. What your want to keep an eye on is if that progresses....

On 9/30/2023 at 9:08 AM, Supermassive said:

I should have mentioned this. I dose easy green at least once a week and my nitrates are currently around 30ppm. I also put 3 root tabs just under the S. repens less than a month ago

The leaves look pretty good size, especially compared to mine! So you're doing something right. As long as CO2 is there and the plant is getting enough light it should grow for you. Because of the way SRep grows, it's a bit funky in terms of the bottom leaves getting choked out. They either have algae, or they end up dying off. The same thing happens with hair grass, monte carlo, and other carpets if the dense substrate level layers of the plant just get too stagnant and have too much detritus in the area.

Your stuff all looks good from what I can see. So, with all those caveats aside, I would check into your GH levels and KH just to sanity check it.  I dose in iron in my tank. For some plants it's very helpful and the pale yellow can be a sign of low levels of iron if the veins stay a dark green color.  Pale leaves is a sign of a few things, so it's hard pinpoint the issue sometimes.  The other very common ones are magnesium or potassium. I mention that as something to check into visually given all the charts around.

If you continue to see issues, maybe just try a different type of root tabs. You mentioned 3 of them. I would think 6-8 probably does the job a bit better. The ones I have say every ~3-4 inches.

Per this one, potentially low phosphate.

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/plant-nutrition

Edited October 5, 2023 by nabokovfan87

[Supermassive]

@nabokovfan87 My GH is around 60 and KH is around 40. I've been lowering my PH/KH over the past few weeks by mixing tap and distilled water so maybe it doesn't like that. It does seem like it could be a combination of deficiencies though. Kind of looks like potassium and phosphate deficiency together. Other than the easy green and root tabs I also dose Flourish comprehensive maybe once every two weeks or so. I don't inject CO2 but I do have an airstone and I occasionally see some pearls on some plant leaves so I think there must be some amount of CO2 available.

There was just a yellow spot on this leaf before today but now there is a hole. I thought with the easy green and root tabs and flourish comprehensive there wouldnt be any chance for a deficiency but apparently not. Should I try dosing twice a week and see how that goes? All of my other plants seem perfectly healthy too.

I have another portion of S. repens that is actually the mother plant of the stuff in the foreground. It isn't having as much trouble which is weird because I didn't give it any root tabs. It still has some leaves dying but its only a few leaves right at the base near the substrate where its heavily shaded. Everything else on the plant looks pretty good.

 

[nabokovfan87]

On 10/5/2023 at 8:21 AM, Supermassive said:

My GH is around 60 and KH is around 40.

My GH is from the tap just around 110 or so, I keep the tanks slightly higher. I'll re-run a test and edit this post with updated values for clarity. (It's 7-9 degrees normally) and then my KH is right about where you're at. I would start by tabbing a little bit and then just add in that minimal amount of something like seachem equilibrium. In my case, I think at most I add 1/3 of a dose once a month to go up one degree.  Extremely minimal, but it's helped me to make sure, when need be, that the plants aren't just overtaking the GH into the ground. I've had a lot of stagnant moments with the SRep, but when things are dialed in and growing, the bright green is the key. As long as that bottom section showing imbalance doesn't climb up the stem.... all healthy.

On 10/5/2023 at 8:21 AM, Supermassive said:

I have another portion of S. repens that is actually the mother plant of the stuff in the foreground. It isn't having as much trouble which is weird because I didn't give it any root tabs. It still has some leaves dying but its only a few leaves right at the base near the substrate where its heavily shaded. Everything else on the plant looks pretty good.

I imagine it's more directly right under the light in terms of placement?

On 10/5/2023 at 8:21 AM, Supermassive said:

Other than the easy green and root tabs I also dose Flourish comprehensive maybe once every two weeks or so. I don't inject CO2 but I do have an airstone and I occasionally see some pearls on some plant leaves so I think there must be some amount of CO2 available.

There was just a yellow spot on this leaf before today but now there is a hole. I thought with the easy green and root tabs and flourish comprehensive there wouldnt be any chance for a deficiency but apparently not. Should I try dosing twice a week and see how that goes? All of my other plants seem perfectly healthy too.

I tend to run what I call a "nitrate test".  That same deficiency you're seeing, the edge of the leaf deteriorating could be nitrates too. It's a mess isn't it!?

What I do is I will test nitrate for 1-2 weeks. Let's say I'm doing water changes weekly....

Day 1. Test nitrates just to have an idea.

Day 2. Test again, see if there's any changes.

Day 7. Before and after water change, test again. Then dose ferts.

Day 8. Morning, everything should be mixed, test again. This is actually the key data point here.

Let that "cook" for a week.

Before your next water change you have a few sets of data to track what the tank and your ferts are doing. And the really critical question for me is how much of the nitrate in the tank is from the fertilizer, how much is from the actual bioload in the tank.

As an example, day 0 for me nitrate might be 5-10. I add in my ferts and then nitrate is 20-30 ppm.  I give it a week and nitrate is down to around 5 again. The key is that the tank is producing waste from feeding and all that, but the actual nitrate I read in the tank is being used and it's from the ferts. You could even view this as the plants being able to handle a second dose midweek as long as algae doesn't take off too.

If you're seeing a high nitrate from bioload, add in the ferts and then you see 2-3x the nitrate value after a week, then you know most of your nitrate is from the waste and not the fertilizer. That's when you'll see things like pinholes and the brown/yellow tips.  In that case, slightly more water volume changed out, but keep everything the same. Then keep tracking. You'd want to see the nitrates gently climb (or drop) but not spike up in a crazy amount. That has been my experience at least.

Some plants need "clean water" and it comes in many forms from filtration and circulation to nitrate levels.

[Supermassive]

@nabokovfan87 I do weekly 3 gallon water changes in the tank which is ten gallons so at least 30%wc probably closer to 40 if you account for wood and gravel and rocks. If I'm consistent with my water changes is it okay to run low GH or should I really consider getting something like equilibrium? I have an amano shrimp and I was concerned about low GH so I got those banquet blocks that are loaded with calcium but the shrimp wasn't interested at all so I figured low GH wasn't an issue but maybe that's a wrong assumption.

On 10/5/2023 at 12:22 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

I imagine it's more directly right under the light in terms of placement?

It is more directly under the light but it is also a lot more shaded by other plants. I think it gets a similar amount of light as the stuff in the foreground. And yeah so far I don't see anything creeping up the stem.

 

When I initially setup the tank about a month ago I put in a lot of root tabs and fertilizer and it was reading around 40ppm of nitrates which is higher than I would like so I cut back on the fertilization a bit and let the nitrates fall to 20ppm where it is as of yesterday. That's 20ppm tested about an hour after my weekly water change and without the weekly fertilizer dose. My tank has very low bioload and quite a bit of plants. I'm confident my nitrates would be near 0 if I didn't fertilize. I have a Betta that's only been in the tank for two days, and a nerite snail and an amano shrimp that have only been in for about a week. So I think essentially all the nitrate is from fertilizer. Before the tank was stocked it seemed to be consistently going down by about 5-10ppm per week. I've only had the tank stocked for less than a week so I guess I need to figure out what the bioload is doing to the nitrate reading.

On 10/5/2023 at 12:22 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

It's a mess isn't it!?

Lol indeed it is.

[nabokovfan87]

On 10/5/2023 at 12:28 PM, Supermassive said:

Before the tank was stocked it seemed to be consistently going down by about 5-10ppm per week. I've only had the tank stocked for less than a week so I guess I need to figure out what the bioload is doing to the nitrate reading.

Sounds good!  I would say if you ever see it at 5, dose.  Then based on whenever it's down to 5 again.... there's your answer on how often to dose.

On 10/5/2023 at 12:28 PM, Supermassive said:

@nabokovfan87 I do weekly 3 gallon water changes in the tank which is ten gallons so at least 30%wc probably closer to 40 if you account for wood and gravel and rocks. If I'm consistent with my water changes is it okay to run low GH or should I really consider getting something like equilibrium? I have an amano shrimp and I was concerned about low GH so I got those banquet blocks that are loaded with calcium but the shrimp wasn't interested at all so I figured low GH wasn't an issue but maybe that's a wrong assumption.

It depends on what low is!  The best I can say is that it was explained to me that GH should be near double your KH value.  Let's say a good "minimum" KH for most things is 3-4 degrees.  This puts most GH ranges in the 6-8 range.  That fits in line with a lot of plants too.  I am no expert by any means, but from what I can see in reliable databases of information, that works pretty well for a wide range of plants to thrive.