Justin wrote:
Hi all,

I was wondering if I could ask some advise...

I currently have a planted tank with pressurised CO2, MH lighting and cable
heating and I'm trying to grow Rotala Macranda, Rotala Waluchi and
Limnophilla Aromatica and I'm having some trouble.

My Limnophilla is growing, but it's is green, the tanks i have seen in on
the net have this deep red plant which is really bushy, mine has about 3/4
of and inch of stem between leaves and only rarely gets a purple tinge.

My Rotala Macranda went through a meltdown when I put it into the tank, I
read on www.thekrib.com that this could possibly be a calcium deficiency so
I went to the local pharmacy and puchased some calcium citrate tables. I
now have growth back on my Macranda, but is is also lacking the deep red
and
the leaves are small.

The Rotala Waluchi is the same as the Macranda. It is starting to grow
back
but lacks the redness...

On the other hand I have a Red Tiger Lilly (or is it lotus?) that appears
deep red.

I have dupla iron balls under all plants, the Iron in my water column is
between .1 and .2. I dose twice a week with Seachem Flourish and seachem
Iron, also dosing Seachem Potassium and Nitrogen where needed. My PH is
6.6-7.2 KH 2. Water changes twice a week amounting to 1/3. I'm in
Austrlaia so we lack any Nitrogen, Potassium or Phosphate in our water,
so I
add them as needed on advise from my local fish store.

Can anyone advise where I might be going wrong? I previously read an
argument on the Krib about seachem's iron not staying in solution long
enough, could this be the cause? I used to use Dupla Iron tabs and stick
them in the gravel after water changes which kept my Iron a bit higher,
should I go back to this?

thanks in advance.

Justin.

I saw the first time you posted this, but it looks like you're doing
everything right to me. I've grown R. macranda in the past, but just
melted a bunch of R. "magenta" myself and I don't know where I went wrong.

The legginess of the Limnophilla and the R. macranda meltdown sound sort
of like inadequate lighting, although that's hard to imagine under MH
lights. You might try positioning them right under the MH light with no
other plants shading them.

In this article, http://www.sfbaaps.com/reference/barr_02_01.shtml, Tom
Barr says to keep iron at 0.2 to 0.5 ppm, only using the lower end of
0.2 if you have substrate iron. So maybe more iron would help,
particularly if any of your other plants are showing signs of chlorosis.
The other thing to consider is magnesium. Plants need magnesium to
use iron so magnesium deficiency looks a lot like iron deficiency.
http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_p...osage_calc.htm will calculate
stock solutions and dosing for many plant nutrients including magnesium
sulfate (epsom salts).

--
Elaine T __
http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__
rec.aquaria.* FAQ http://faq.thekrib.com