Holes in Altnernanthera reineckii mini

[bennyblee]

Hi all, wondering if anyone has any thoughts on why the older leaves on my Alternanthera reineckii mini are now suddenly full of large holes. It happened rather quickly, over the course of a week or so.

The tank is 65g high, moderately planted, low-tech with Fluval 3.0 currently at 60% for the whites, 50% red, 3% blue. Filter is Fx2 plus a sponge filter. Layered substrate with Fluval Stratum, Eco-complete in the middle, topped with with more Fluval Stratum. Parameters are 0/0/0, pH 7.8. I dose Easy Green 2 pumps daily. It was first cycled and planted about 3 months ago. Other plants include moneywort, Rotala, Anubias nana, microsword, dwarf sag, Mayaca fluviatilis, Pogostemon stellatus Dassen, jungle val, pink amazon sword, water wisteria, hornwort, and red root floaters. I started most of these from tissue culture so all are still just starting to fill in so not much biomass despite the diversity. Tank is stocked with one SAE, 2 otocinclus, 4 rummy nose (was supposed to be 12 but my initial stocking didn't go well), 11 ember tetras, 3 nerite snails, 6 Amano shrimp, and now over a dozen young glass shrimp (I was clearly sold 2 glass shrimp among what I thought were 8 Amanos, because I have a crop of baby shrimp now...)

Is this a nutrient deficiency? If so, which? No matter how much fertilizer I dose, I can't seem to get the nitrates up before I start running into algae issues. I am certain the tank is fully cycled. I don't think it's my test kit as my quarantine tank gets high nitrates all the time when I am quarantining plants in it. I just started dosing Flourish Trace yesterday. Or is that my shrimp are running out of algae to eat and are targeting my plants? None of the other plants have the same issue, just these guys. I've seen occasionally the glass shrimp resting on the leaves, gathering stuff, but only on occasion, and they would do this before I started seeing the holes. Here is a photo from last week, you can see a glass on one of the newer leaves. This was right when the holes first started, there are plenty more now on all the lower leaves.

Thanks!

 

[Mmiller2001]

Looks like someone is eating the weaker leaves due to deterioration. 1 pump is nowhere near enough. I’d do 18 pumps a week followed by 50% water changes. So 18 pumps over 6 days, 7th day water change and repeat.

[JoeQ]

☝️IMO, at a certain point your plant mass out-grows an  all-in-one fertilizers benefits (financial/ease of use/ect). This is especially true with larger tanks.

Edited April 7 by JoeQ
clarity

[bennyblee]

On 4/7/2024 at 10:08 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

Looks like someone is eating the weaker leaves due to deterioration. 1 pump is nowhere near enough. I’d do 18 pumps a week followed by 50% water changes. So 18 pumps over 6 days, 7th day water change and repeat.

 

Thanks--but I do 2 pumps daily, so 14 pumps a week, just spread out. I tried to increase that to 3 pumps a day but then the hair algae took off. That was before I had the shrimp in there though so maybe it's worth increasing again?

On 4/7/2024 at 10:22 AM, JoeQ said:

☝️IMO, at a certain point your plant mass out-grows an  all-in-one fertilizers benefits (financial/ease of use/ect). This is especially true with larger tanks.

 

Thanks--so what would you recommend? Switching to dry ferts at this point? I forgot to mention I put down a bunch of root tabs when I first planted as well.

[Mmiller2001]

On 4/7/2024 at 9:03 AM, bennyblee said:

I tried to increase that to 3 pumps a day but then the hair algae took off.

Nutrients do not cause algae. If your nitrates are zero per your above testing, then the cause of the problem is not having enough. This weakens the plants, the plants begin dying, releasing organics and algae takes advantage of the imbalance. 
 

What is the average pH of the tank?

Edited April 7 by Mmiller2001

[JoeQ]

On 4/7/2024 at 11:03 AM, bennyblee said:

Thanks--so what would you recommend? Switching to dry ferts at this point? I forgot to mention I put down a bunch of root tabs when I first planted as well.

I went from an all-in-one to a premixed macro/micro formula (this was a beneficial "learning step") and eventually to mixing my own because of cost. Im only at 36g and running low co2, sill I use about 250ml of macros in 2 months. Using a premix that cost would add up!

[bennyblee]

On 4/7/2024 at 11:28 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

Nutrients do not cause algae. If your nitrates are zero per your above testing, then the cause of the problem is not having enough. This weakens the plants, the plants begin dying, releasing organics and algae takes advantage of the imbalance. 
 

What is the average pH of the tank?

7.8. The Stratum buffered that down to 6.8 for 6 weeks or so, but then it's now back to the pH coming from my tap.

I get the nutrients alone don't cause algae--but obviously that amount of fertilizer was tipping my tank over into an imbalance. I think it's because I have a tall tank and since most of the plants are still low to the substrate, there wasn't enough light for the plants to use all of the ferts so the algae took over. In other words, I think it's more likely there was not enough light for that level of fertilizer. I'm in the process of slowly ramping up my light levels as well, I just went up to 70%. My photo period is also a bit low, at 7 hours including my ramp up and ramp down, I think I can probably extend that a bit now that the algae is back under control...

Thanks, it does seem more likely to me that this is due to the shrimp picking at the weaker leaves than a specific nutrient deficiency alone. Again, it all happened so fast, and all of my other plants look fine.

 

[Mmiller2001]

Keep in mind EG is EDTA chelated. You will loose a good chunk of iron at that pH.

[bennyblee]

On 4/7/2024 at 1:21 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

Keep in mind EG is EDTA chelated. You will loose a good chunk of iron at that pH.

Interesting, good to know, hadn't realized that! Maybe I'll add back in a bit of extra iron in too then..