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I've got a relatively new tank and currently my only plants are crypts. They've been in there about 2 weeks and they are turning black around the edges. Any ideas?

I've got a 90 gal, with 4x48" 40 watt T12s (2 plant nad 2 full spectrum) which should be enough light for crypts. 0 ammonia and nitrites and less than 10 ppm nitrates. Doing weekly about 10-20% water changes. The fish are assorted tetras, and a coupe of mollies. The substrate is regular old gravel, but again I think that should be fine for crypts. The filter is a cascade 1000 (thinking of doubling that). I've got a 24" air wand. No CO2 or ferts right now (I never needed them for crypts on my old 20L) but I did try adding a trace element additive a few days ago to see if that helped but it didn't.

I'm thinking it could be phosphates. I've been getting a bit of algae lately so I'll be going to the LFS tomorrow to get further water testing done. Anything else you all can think of?

Last edited by coffeeman at 17-Dec-2005 03:37

coffeeman,

Turning black around the edges could be the beginning of black beard algae. Or are the leaves disintegrating?

You have less than 2wpg of lights so adding CO2 is not a requirement. How long do you lights on each day?

Your plant food is for sure out of sink. I am sure you have some Ammonia that is sucked up by the plants (and bio filter) and some nitrates, I think you also have some phosphates (will see after the water test). But from a macro perspective you are missing Potassium. As long as these are not balanced the algae will profit more than the plants. Adding micros (trace) will not help either as plant uptake is hindered by the lack of Potassium.

You say you never needed ferts or CO2 on your 20 l ( liters? ). That was a very small tank then. What was the light on that one and how much water did you change? I would assume it did fine because it had less light (maybe not in wpg but small tanks need much more to achieve similar effects than larger tanks) and you probably changes more than 2 liters and the new water contained enough goodies to keep the plants fertilized.

Hope this helps,

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

The leaves are degrading a bit too. They seem to be thinner and less vibrant in their color and a couple have started to fall apart. Lights are on for 12 hours a day.

Anyway, I looked into fertilizers, but all I found were either trace mineral additives or things that add nitrogen which I don't want. I'll take another look at a different LFS today. Adside from an additive, is there any other way to increase my potassium?

Sorry, 20l meant 20long - I come from the reptile world and we make that distinction, but I guess all you guys really needed to know is that it was 20 gallons. On that tank I had only 26 watts of light (2 screw in fluorescents to replace my incandescents) and I was doing 20% every other week. That was at a different house though, so perhaps the water was different enough.

coffeeman,

Crypts melting is a rather common phenomenon when they are newly placed in a tank or even when they are only moved from one spot to another in the same tank. Most of the time though new leaves will grow after a short while. This in itself will not create the black edges though.

And there is no other way of adding Potassium than to add it . Let’s see what the LFS water test will say.

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Crypts melt often if moved or if they don't like you. Some do it just to make you mad. And people told you plants don't have a personality. I think its a suicidal, i don't want to die just give me more attention personality.

Crypts melt often if moved or if they don't like you. Some do it just to make you mad. And people told you plants don't have a personality. I think its a suicidal, i don't want to die just give me more attention personality.

LOL! They're certainly getting more attention.

LFS didn't have a potassium test so I just bought some to add. Iron was non-detectable so I bought some of that. Calcium and Magnesium are also nearly absent (magnesium was nondetect and calcium was about 10 PPM) so I may need to add those too. I'll see if what I got helps.

Phosphates were high - 2.0 - so I bought some phos guard to get it down in a hurry and will monitor to see if it stays low. My nitrates are reasonable so I don't think I'm overfeeding. Where else would phosphates come from? Should I have the LFS test my tap water for phosphates?

This might work take the crypts out and let them float around. I have tried this and some times (usually most) the roots start growing again and the plant begins to look healthy again.

This could take several weeks to happen it is a very slow process.

Have a look in [link=My Profile]http://
www.fishprofiles.com/interactive/forums/profile.asp?userid=6741" style="COLOR: #00FF00[/link] for my tank info

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coffeeman,

Well, sounds “almost” good

Adding potassium is a good idea, you can get your values as high as the nitrate values.
Your nitrates can be around 10ppm without any problems. If you would increase the water change to weekly and 50% then you could let it climb even to 20ppm by the end.
Phosphates – well, 2ppm is not all that high. I would assume Phosguard binds phosphates (never used it) and as such you should have 0ppm that are useful to your plants. If true then this is not a good idea.

Just in case you didn’t know, the above mentioned ferts are macros. Now below are some comments to the micros.

Iron can be tricky. What test kit did you use to measure them and what is the lowest value this kit displays? 0.1ppm is already enough iron.
Calcium and Magnesium can be added but are also only micro nutrients and should not be in large quantities.

Best thing to do is to look out for plant changes and adjust doing based on displayed deficiencies. [link=HERE]http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_nutrient.htm" style="COLOR: #ff6633[/link] you can read about some of them.

Hope this helps,

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Wow, thanks for the link! They also say it sounds like potassium. In fact, I haven't heard anyone not say potassium when talking about a possible nutrient deificancy.

Getting potassium as high as my nitrates would be a pretty costly endeavour using the SeaChem potassium. Do you know of a cheaper source of potassium (or iron, or micros for that matter)? I only added 1 PPM but maybe I'll add more. Do you know how long it shoudl take to start seeing results if it is Potassium?

Phosguard is pretty slow at binding the phosphates and they recommend only using it for 48 hours. I'm going to retest tomorrow and see where I am at. I'd like the phosphates to be lower but I agree that 2 probably isn't that bad (I only have a minor algae problem so that tells me they're not that bad).

The iron kit was a nutrafin and I think it only went as low as 0.1. I added 0.1 via dosing but my water supply is supposed to have iron in it so maybe I'll cut that back to .05 once the plants are doing well again and see if that's enough. Eventually I'd like to make a mixture that I can just add certain quantity of at water changes.

Try some [link=PMDD]http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Fertilizer/pmdd-tim.html" style="COLOR: #EB4288[/link]

As for sources of potassium, look for tree stump remover, pure KNO3. If you're in the states (didnt' see a flag in your profile) try looking in Lowes (I never found it in home depot or any of my local garden supply stores) for "greenlight" tree stump remover in a plastic jar. It's sold in a powder that will likely last you the next 3 lifetimes. Mix it with water and dose accordingly. Double check the ingredients though you want to make sure it's only potassium nitrate.
Usually it's a teaspoon per gallon of water then a teaspoon or two of the solution added to the tank.

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Thanks for the help everyone! The crypts showed a noticable improvement today (though they are not completely better).

I have been looking into PMDD. It looks complicated and I don't want to pay shipping on the chemicals. I also need something relatively soon (before I run out of expensive stuff and before I go on vacation so I can have the pet sitter dose for me). Maybe I'll give Molbak's a call tomorrow and head there on Friday after work to get the stuff.

I went to Lowes tonight to see if they could help. They had a Lilly Miller transplant product that had most of the micros in it (including boron!), but it also had vitamin B1. Does anyone know if B1 is bad for fish? It was also a lot more diluted than CSM.

They had epsom salts (of course I can get those anywhere).

They claimed they usually carried the stump remover but they were out. They were clueless on the K2SO4 which is more important I think since my nitrates are high enough that if I make PMDD I am probably going to start out not using KNO3 (easier to add to the mix later than to remove).