Day 152 "Metaphor": Addressing Nutrient Deficiencies

Dealing with Phosphate Deficiency

Staurogyne Repens with unhealthy leaves at middle node

Over the last couple of weeks I increased my phosphate dosing to 20+ppm. I significant jump compared to my previous dosing amount of 4-5 ppm. This is in  response to the long ignored issues such as GSA and instantly melting leaves in staurogyne repens, melting and slow growth on monte carlo, and iron deficiency like symptoms on AR mini.

Visible GSA covering most of the old leaves

I am dosing KH2PO4 on daily basis to ensure there's enough on water column all the time. I have to dose 4+ppm everyday just to keep up with the 0.25-0.5ppm amount on water column. At first it's strange that the plants seem to absorb too much but then I realized ADA aquasoil is likely to be absorbing most of them. That's fine because I read somewhere before that phosphates are best absorbed by plants through roots (I need to confirm this later).

Perhaps in time when there's enough phosphates in the soil, it's not going to absorb too much any more so I can dial it down a bit. I just need to keep taking measurements on a weekly basis to monitor the tank's uptake.

I will keep up with this because I start to see huge improvement on monte carlo. It's a lot greener now and the stems look firm. Growth's been fantastic too!

As for Staurogyne repens, I see improvement but GSA is still on older leaves. Some leaves in the middle of the stalks are still suffering from holes and instant melting but it's not a lot, at least compared to when I was dosing much less phosphates. This might be due to other deficiency which I am also addressing at the moment.



Iron Deficiency in Alternanthera Reineckii Mini

I am using Seachem Flourish Iron as Iron fertilizer and dosing it 3 times a week at minimum suggested level via EI method. Bad idea. Flourish Iron is based on gluconate as chelating agent and iron gets consumed or precipitate in just a matter of minutes after it's dosed in the water column. It is suggested that when using Flourish Iron, it's best to dose it daily to ensure its available for plants most of the time.

Alternanthera Reineckii Mini New Leaves Melting

I've been dosing a total of 1.5 ppm Iron per week using Seachem Flourish Iron liquid fertilizer. I stagger it every other day. This week I triple the dose and dose it everyday instead. Flourish Iron uses gluconate as chelating agent and it does make iron get consumed quickly by plants or precipitate in a matter of minutes. Not dosing it frequently may leave plants without Iron supply for a period of time.

In any case, I managed to get EDTA and DTPA Iron powders and will use these in future. Those chelators will keep iron longer in the tank and I will probably be able to measure its uptake.

As for the plants, staurogyne repens improved after increasing phosphate dosing but certain problems remain. as I mentioned before, older leaves still suffer from GSA and some leaves in the middle stems still suffer from holes. It will probably get better in time and it may not be iron deficiency at all but it probably won't hurt to increase iron dosing.

AR mini shows the most obvious iron deficiency symptoms. Just a few days ago, It's middle and older leaves improved and it appears more red. But new leaves are melting like crazy. This is after increased phosphate dosing for a few weeks.

Although monte carlo has improved significantly, I still notice a few new stems and leaves melting and this maybe due to iron deficiency as well. However, this may also be due to magnesium deficiency.


General Hardness: Magnesium and Calcium are "Secondary Macros"

Monte Carlo with a few new leaves melting 

Although water hardness is at 5 dGH, there may not be enough magnesium. I have no way to measure this so I'm going with a guess if either magnesium or calcium is lacking in the water. In any case, I haven't been dosing Seachem Equilibrium in the tank for several months. This would have probably addressed this issue so last week I dropped at least 8g of Equilibrium and my GH jumped to 8. Is there improvement with the plants? Yes, but I can't tell its because of magnesium and calcium from Equilibrium that caused it. Note that I am also dosing increased amount of phosphates and iron at this stage.

Potassium
Do I need to worry about this? Since I started increasing phosphate dosage I also increased K. I'm dosing at 40 to 50+ppm per week now. Unfortunately I have no test kit to measure the tank's uptake but I think it's something I should worry about. Experts claim it's fine to have a lot of K floating around the tank and with a weekly water change, you always keep it under control.

In any case, we still see some leaves at the middle of the stems in staurogyne repens melting and having holes so it's best to have enough potassium floating around the tank all the time.

Nitrates
Now this is the one I have abundance in the tank. I always have 40+ ppm floating around that last week I dosed only a total of 2 ppm. This week I won't even bother to dose any but I need to keep measuring to ensure there's enough in the tank for plants to take.

Algae? What algae?
With all the fuzz about over abundance of fertilizers in tank will cause algae bloom, I think it's all hogwash. After increasing dosage levels on all nutrients, there's been no sign of algae of any kind in the my tank. In fact, water's quality has never been this better. I might be saying things too soon so we'll in a few more weeks...