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Red Plants, Iron Dependant???
The Tropica website lists a ton of plants. You'll see many descriptions
like.... "this specie falls into the 'high light' catergory like other red plants". I obviously didn't copy this word for word, but generalizations like that are riddled throughout the Tropica website. The Kasselmann book also gives many such generalizations. E. Osiris for example, where she states the red/brown color "...develop under intense light". I'm just curious because your statements blew my entire "red plant" theories! I'm not a chemist, so I take what I read/hear to heart. This is why I'm fairly confused at the moment. Craig Brye University of Phoenix Online I know Claus and Kasslemann personally. So I have no issues going head to head with them on the issue either. I've stated why their observations occured. Now it's time for them or others to say why I have good color at low light with red plants...................and why I can have red color at deep depths but green at higher depths and why most red plants are low light plants. I have not found any plant that does not do well at 2w/gal which is often the low end iof the lighting spectrum these days. Thing is.......2w/gal of NO FL light was "high light" 9-10 years ago! So when much of the books/species write ups were written, that was the case. But people seem to think "more light is better". Not true at all. There's a range of lighting that is best and easiest to deal with. This is for all plants. There might be one or two that are finicky that we may run into, but 99.9% of the time, the needs are similar to other plants. At least with most of the 300 or so species we keep right now. If that is not enough to play with, well, you must have a lot of tanks and do a lot of work on planted tanks. I think the average aquarist can figure things out themselves on this issue. If I can do it at moderate to low light consisently, and have excellent color and health, is high light really required? No. Claus said most people's tanks had trace deficencies when he came here, he did not say "not enough light". I'd been adding 5x the recommended amounts of traces. People felt 0.1ppm of Fe was a good amount at the time, I had 1.0ppm depending on which test kit used and time after dosing etc. People thought excess traces in and of themselves would cause algae. These days, people add a lot more traces in their CO2 enriched plant tanks. Folks are slow to realize that less light is fine, 2-3w/gal is plenty for any plant you might want. PC/MH's are going to have even more light so you can go lower on these. Regards, Tom Barr |
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