What is happening to my plants?

[Arc]

Beyond the photo, the lower leaves have melted away.  Magnesium deficiency?

I am using Thrive C Complete Low Tech Fertilizer.  This is a 50 gallon tank and I am dosing once a week at 1 pump per 5 gallons (10 pumps) as per instructions.  It says on the bottle that I could dose twice a week, but I'm worried about an algae spike.

Help.

[Jungle Fan]

Looks like your diagnosis is spot on: yellowing leaves, dark green veins. I'd give it a try and up the dosing. If your plants aren't doing well and can't effectively use the other nutrients algae will and they will thrive, so one way or another you might get an algae spike if your plants aren't doing well. You can always scale back again if you notice increased algae growth when doing so.

[Arc]

Thanks.  I am not having much luck with these plants at all.

[MDoc]

How long have you had these plants?  What kind of nitrate levels do you have? 

[tolstoy21]

I’d s start by checking to see if your lacking nitrogen or magnesium. Try doing a water test to see what the nitrate levels are, as well as hardness (GH).

if these are rooted plants, maybe try some root tabs. My sword plants started yellowing as they got bigger until I replenished their root tabs.

Edited March 5, 2021 by tolstoy21

[Arc]

19 hours ago, MDoc said:

How long have you had these plants?  What kind of nitrate levels do you have? 

These specific plants for about 6 months.  The others, longer.

Just did a test:

• PH 8.2
• Nitrite 0ppm
• Ammonia 0ppm
• Nitrate 10ppm

[Arc]

17 hours ago, tolstoy21 said:

I’d s start by checking to see if your lacking nitrogen or magnesium. Try doing a water test to see what the nitrate levels are, as well as hardness (GH).

if these are rooted plants, maybe try some root tabs. My sword plants started yellowing as they got bigger until I replenished their root tabs.

I don't have a GH test, but we have hard water.  But isn't GH tied to magnesium?

[tolstoy21]

Yes. I believe it’s calcium and magnesium. A GH test won’t tell you how much of each you have.  I just figured if your GH was zero, like if the water went through a softener, you’d have something to work with. 

[Arc]

We are on a softener!  But again, I only have ever tested pH which always high from the tap and low from the drinking water RO system (it's too slow to top up the tank).

My water colour gets dark pretty quick after a water change, which I attribute to tannins from the driftwood (or possibly leaching out of the rocks in the tank).

I need to find a GH test!

[Jungle Fan]

Here's a guideline to

Nutrient deficiencies:

Calcium:

Misshaped and/or stunted new leaves

CO2:

White deposits on leaves, and dying leaves

Iron:

New Leaves that are yellow, or white with green veins

Magnesium:

Established leaves turn yellow, with dark veins

Manganese:

Yellow spots, holes in leaves

Nitrogen:

Old leaves are yellow, new leaves are light green

Phosphate:

Older leaves are yellow, green spots on leaves

Potassium:

Yellow leaf edges, brown dots on leaves

Remember it can be a combination of multiple things. Could be a number of things like for example Magnesium, Potassium, and Iron.

However, since you mentioned water softener, most water softeners work with salt, and at that point your plants may simply be dying from dehydration as non-sensical as it may at first sound, but aquatic plants are adapted to freshwater, in salt water the water is drawn out of their cells by osmosis and they die.

You also mentioned an RO drinking water system, if you are using the RO water in your tank then you can disregard the previous statement because it would effectively remove salt from your water.

Edited March 6, 2021 by Jungle Fan

[tolstoy21]

On 3/6/2021 at 1:26 PM, Jungle Fan said:

However, since you mentioned water softener, most water softeners work with salt, and at that point your plants may simply be dying from dehydration as non-sensical as it may at first sound, but aquatic plants are adapted to freshwater, in salt water the water is drawn out of their cells by osmosis and they die.

Water softeners don’t put salt into the water in any quantity that will affect plant or fish health. However, they will strip out GH. That’s what they do, the pull the hardness out of the water. The are called softeners, but they don’t make the water soft in the way we aquarium people think about softness it in terms of low KH and PH. Instead they pull ‘hard’ minerals out of the water that would otherwise wind  up on our drinking glasses and bathroom fixtures as hard water spots and despots. Softeners don’t impact KH, they impact GH. 

The recharge cycle of a softener dislodges the spots on the softener’s resin beads that  are occupied by the captured calcium and magnesium. It does this by displacing those with sodium ions that are provided by salt. This way the resin is cleaned so it can trap more of your waters natural hardness. And yes, those sodium ions eventually make it into the water in the tank, but they don’t make the tank or your drinking water salty in any appreciable way. (We had a thread about this a few months ago).

I’d test the Gh from wherever you get the water your putting in your tank. If you have a softener, I’m going to bet it’s near zero.

Edited March 9, 2021 by tolstoy21

[tolstoy21]

1 hour ago, Jungle Fan said:

You also mentioned an RO drinking water system, if you are using the RO water in your tank then you can disregard the previous statement because it would effectively remove salt from your water.

RO is not good for plants as it has literally nothing in it. They won’t live in RO that has not been remineralized (that is, had the GH restored by a product like Seachem Equilibrium).

[Jungle Fan]

I once lived in a house that had a water softener system which used salt and it was impossible to keep plants because they would die, you are right it did not make the drinking water "salty", nor did it lower the pH but the system's effect was enough to make raising plants impossible. It was the only difference to the house where I lived before in the same water district where my plants were thriving. I did not change lighting, ferts, substrate, or type of plants, nor CO2 from before. We both agree on RO not being good for plants, if one uses an RO system I would think the user would realize that you have to remineralize the water before using it that's why I did not mention it but it is a valid point, as is your recommendation to check GH. On the water softener system we disagree and as long as I keep my tanks I won't be using one, but I thank you for bringing up the remineralization, I should have mentioned it for completeness.

[Arc]

I haven't used RO water for the tank, just softened tap water with Seachem Prime and the ferts added.

So I just got different test strips...

• GH <25ppm (unacceptable)
• Nitrite 0ppm (good)
• Nitrate 0-10ppm (good)
• KH <40ppm (unacceptable)
• pH >8.0 (unacceptable)

 

[Fishdude]

See I'm concerned about using tap water from a water softener. I did find that the softener lowered the pH from 8.6 to about 7.5, but the sodium content is substantial from our system (because we're basically softening water from a limestone aquifer). 

I'm curious about this because I expect to need RO/DI water that's remineralized to keep fish in the house I'm moving to. I've had a lot of success with plants but not with hard water and not with a water softener.

[Fishdude]

Also with a GH/KH kit you can find out approximately how much magnesium is in there (since the hardness is either from calcium or magnesium). I don't have the calculation handy but it's in the kit that you can estimate based on how much of the hardness is calcium carbonate.

[Arc]

Yeah, I need to replace our RO system and I am think about getting one capable of more gallons per day to allow for this.

I did test my tap water that doesn't got through the water softener and the results were:

• GH >150ppm (unacceptable)
• Nitrite 0ppm (good)
• Nitrate 0-10ppm (good)
• KH >300ppm (unacceptable)
• pH >8.0 (unacceptable)

So pH is always high and GH/KH are on the extremes.

[tolstoy21]

On 3/6/2021 at 3:27 PM, Jungle Fan said:

I once lived in a house that had a water softener system which used salt and it was impossible to keep plants because they would die, you are right it did not make the drinking water "salty", nor did it lower the pH but the system's effect was enough to make raising plants impossible. It was the only difference to the house where I lived before in the same water district where my plants were thriving. I did not change lighting, ferts, substrate, or type of plants, nor CO2 from before. We both agree on RO not being good for plants, if one uses an RO system I would think the user would realize that you have to remineralize the water before using it that's why I did not mention it but it is a valid point, as is your recommendation to check GH. On the water softener system we disagree and as long as I keep my tanks I won't be using one, but I thank you for bringing up the remineralization, I should have mentioned it for completeness.

My guess is what effects plant health when a softener is involved is the lack of calcium and magnesium. One would have to restore the GH in 'softened' water with re-mineralizers to the same degree one would have restore the GH in RO water (in RO water you typically also restore the KH).

In my experience, I put more sodium in my tanks when I squirt in brine shrimp water into them multiple times a day than a softener introduces and my plants are happy (and I raise my brine shrimp in the same solar salt).

All my tank water goes through a nitrate filter that is recharged with the same solar salt solution as a water softener and I have great plant growth.  The tank below is being delivered 'sodium' ions all day long, every day via a drip feed of water and my plants grow fine.

I have no doubt softeners can affect affect plant health (my 'softened' water has zero GH). My feeling is that a lot of folks just attribute that affect to the wrong cause, because sodium = bad. But they forget to think about what degree of sodium actually = bad, and what degree is completely negligible.  This then gets passed around the WWW as conventional wisdom, but when I actually look at this through the lens of my experiences and then really think about the subject to any degree, that 'wisdom' does not feel like it lives up to the evidence test.

I could be very wrong about all of this, but in my experience with using brine to recharge water filtration media, I have yet to see the resultant addition of sodium to any of my tanks impact plant health, when the plants needs in terms of GH, KH. light, and ferts are being met.

I actually do bypass my softener in my house for tank water because I don't want to have to pay $$$ to restore the GH back into the water.  So I'm not at all opposed to someone not using softened water.  I'm just not yet seeing the 'sodium' being introduced as a byproduct of  recharging  ion-exchange resin as being impactful to plant or fish health in my personal experience.

Edited March 9, 2021 by tolstoy21

[Arc]

Thanks for all the info.  I just did a 50% water change (after ripping out these nearly dead plants) and added 10% water diverted around the water softener.  GH/KH are up nicely.  Will keep testing and doing this for a while.

I'm also thinking of breaking down and spending money on a CO2 system for the growth and pH.  Another solution might involve throwing tons of money at this tank, getting kicked out by my wife and I can move someplace with proper water.  🤣