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here are some pics of my not to happy swords, can anyone advise me what the problem might be?

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f249/hembo666/19-02-06_1432.jpg

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f249/hembo666/DSCF0025.jpg


ferts are flourish and flourish excell,

water params
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 20
ph 7.0
temp 27.5c

Wow Mark,

These are holes with some plant mass around them

Bensaf also concluded that it is a Nutrient imbalance. I would seriously start to fertilize Potassium, maybe even Phosphates, and some more micros.

Ingo

---

Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

is there such a thing as good all in 1 fert? or would i be best to keep up the flourish and add some macro ferts with it?

im unsure about the swords, i think they may need to come out and be replaced at some point.

ive also heard that some of the plants i have can suffer with flourish excell, like the crypts and hornwort.

i could do with someone sorting me out a decent easy to follow fert routine

hornwort - I am not sure about this plant and Excel. I know it is bad for Egeria plants (najas and densa).

There is no "one fert for everything" solution.

About a routine: Describe the tank and its maintenance in great detail.

I have to run some errands now, til later,

Ingo

---

Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

ok, thanks

going to try my best here.
its a 260ltr tank,

water params
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 20
ph 7.0
temp 27.5c

ferts,
flourish 5ml, twice a week
flourish excell 5ml daily

water changes, 30% weekly.

livestock,
2 gold zebra danios (last ones left from cycling)
6 peppered cories
4 bandit cories
2 panda cories
3 denisonii barbs
10 pentazona barbs
2 cockatoo dwarf cichlid
2 bristlenose catfish
1 L127 plec
2 blue rams
1 discus
? MTS

plants,
2 large swords
small amount of hornwort
small amount of cabomba
several crypts
2 small anubia
1 bunch of unknown stem plant on right hand side
large amounts of moss

here is a pic of the full tank so you can zoom in and see the level of planting.

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f249/hembo666/fulltank.jpg

i can easily take more pics if they are needed.

thanks again for the help

LF, good point about gettingmore than one opinion,
the questions you asked:

Q1 "do you know what ferts plants need?"
A i know the basics but obviously from my results not enough.

Q2 "how come you have 20ppm of N, overstocked?"
A maybe a little heavily stocked but it is stable at 20ppm, i can bring it down and keep it stable at around 10ppm

Q3 "try to get come close-ups of the unknown plant so we can help you identify it."
A i will when i can but im having computer problems at the moment. i think it may be some type of Ludwigia

Hi,
A couple of things. First the mainly affected plants are
swords. Swords are heavy root feeders and establish very
elaborate root systems in an effort to make use of every
bit of nutrients that they can find. In particular, they
"love" iron (Fe) and when they don't find it, they begin
to look like yours. The resolution to that is to use
plant tablets, or plant sticks pushed into the gravel about
two inches out from the crown of each plant.

Second is your lighting, you should probably increase your
lighting (watts/gallon) to encourage more growth.

Which brings us to the third thing, you are missing some
key nutrients and the plants are suffering. Those that
are not suffering are either able to do without what
is scarce and causing your problems, or they can make
use of the nutrient as fast as it is found while the
other plants have to "work" to break down the
organic compounds to get at what they need.

Additional fertilizer is probably what is needed.

Here is a site that describes the symptoms that plants
give us, when they are malnourished:

http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_nutrient.htm

And a second site:
http://www.otoaquatic.com/nutrient_deficiency.asp

Hope this helps...
Frank

-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Firstly, I'm basically a newbie (having had my tank for two years and plants for about 15 months) so take my advice for what it's worth. I had the same problem you did. What fixed it for me was using "Jobe's Plant Food Spikes for Lush Ferns and Palms" which I found after reading about them on various websites. I place half a spike near the roots once a month.

As you can see by my photo, the yellow arrow shows a bit of degeneration on a leaf but it tends to happen on the older leaves. The red arrow shows a "runner" that the plant has shot up in the last couple of weeks so going by that, I'm assuming it's doing well.

http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/166/sword5nz.jpg

I use DIY CO2, 3 WPG/11hrs, laterite enriched substrate and no ferts other than the plant spikes. I tried dosing with "NoSalt" when I got the problems with the leaves like you did but it didn't help in my case.

On a side note, the "anubias barteri nana petite" at the front of the tank started out a year ago as a small plant with a half dozen leaves. It now covers basically the whole ground of my tank and has thrived with the CO2.

I've also been lazy pruning for awhile and it's turned into a jungle in there - especially the "Weiss Grun" along the back which is becoming a PITA. I plan to eventually remove it and replace it with propagation of a couple of crypts and a ludwigia plant that are getting a little too big.

Hopefully I've maybe given you another option to try.

Now this puzzles me a LOT.

My Amazon Swords rely entirely on the nutrients from the fishes. And seem to be doing pretty well on this. No extra fertilisers or anything. And the only feeders in that aqurium that are likely to be messy are the Panda Corys, which are fairly small (though I do have 12 of them!).

This aquarium of yours Hembo, is occupied by Barbs, which are well known for being 'pigs with fins', to the extent that preventing them from overloading your biofilter can be something of a challenge, especially larger Barbs like the Denisons' Barbs. With your stocking, you should have NO problem at all getting enough nutrients into the root system from where I'm sitting - not least because flake foods tend to be rich in iron, so if any surplus gets past the fishes, it leaches iron into the surroundings.

Just for comparison, here's my Amazon Swords shot a few days ago (what appears to be black fuzzy tangles of blanket weed is in fact Java Moss gone mad and in need of pruning!).

Don't forget my tank gets twice weekly water changes and gravel vacs to keep the Pandas happy, and those Amazon Swords are still putting out new leaves - in fact, if I pruned some of the old ones away, I reckon the total leaf count would still be close to 100!

I'll try and get an even better shot of the Amazon Swords to illustrate how lush they are in the next couple of days.

So, I'm using no plant fertilisers, just letting them grow on what the fish excrete, and I'm conducting two gravel vacs per week removing excess mulm, so as to keep my nitrate levels nice and low to keep the Pandas happy. Yet my Amazon Swords are growing like stink. Something very definitely amiss here ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Hi,
Swords do demand iron and are considered heavy root
feeders. If you are not supplying the iron, then they are
getting it from somewhere else. Your municipal water supply
perhaps? Twice weekly water changes are probably enough
to furnish much of the macro nutrients necessary for your
plants.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Guess what?

I've just done a water change and gravel vac, and my Amazon Swords have just gone one better - throwing off baby plantlets on runners at the back!

I suppose I must be doing something right, because they wouldn't behave like this if they weren't happy ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Well,

I am not in the "Heavy Substrate Fertilizer" camp, I am more on Bensaf's side who in This Thread shows a very healthy Amazon with no substrate fertilization at all.

Holes usually come from a lack of Potassium. Adding just that will probably cause different problems as now something else is out of wack. The right balance of N, P, and K, plus a healthy dosing of a micro nutrient mix, will make things better, although it is for sure too late for the effected leaves.

Ingo

---

Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

ok, the swords are being cut back bit by bit removing the worst leaves, i have just got hold of some flourish potassium so i will start dosing with that and look for improvements and other problems if it throws the balance out elsewhere.
thanks for the advise, i will keep you posted on how things go.

I only use Tropica's Master Grow, and all my plants do great, no substrate fertilization whatsoever, and i've found that specially swords love it.

Looks to me like they're being eaten. During my short love affair with L-239s, my small swords had the very same tears in foliage due to continual injestion.

i guess it is a possibility that the Bns are having a munch on them