Holes In Leaves

[Rxblade123]

A few days ago I noticed a few small holes in a leaf. I didn't think much of it, but today I looked more closely in the tank and noticed there were more holes. Here is a Picture of the leaves:

What do I do?

 

[Hoovercat]

Are you dosing potassium at all?

 

[crazycat]

i second that. it looks like a potassium deficiency. gregwatson.com has postassium sulfate, which is what i use. my plants seem to require a lot of it!

 

[ringfinger]

I had to start dosing 1/2 tsp of the potassium sulfate 3 times a week in my 29 gallon to get my sword's leaves healthy again. They looked exactly the same.

 

[Zezmo]

I don't know the exact name that plant...but... I bought some at Petco a while back. The plants never did well in my high light tank, and they have those same holes. I ended up moving it to one of my lower light low-tech 10 gallons. It has not been there long enough to say how it will do.
In my case, I can say that not enough K is not the problem. I really doubt any deficiency. I think this particular plant may just develop those holes on older leaves. If it is a deficiency, it is most likely not N P or K, nor is it Magnesium, nor Iron. These all get plenty of "dosage" into the tank.
I would be interested to hear what ferts/light you are currently using. Also, is there the chance that the plant is getting nibbled on by something?

 

[Simpte]

Its Hygrophila corymbosa v. Angustifolia. And it does look like a K defficiency. I dose with KNO3 and kill 2 birds with one stone. My tanks also get K from my KH2PO4.

 

[malkore]

I'd say K deficiency. I don't see signs of yellowing so I doubt it's iron.

If you don't have to dose much N (from KNO3) then it's very easy to develop a K deficiency, since we don't have hobby grade test kits for it, we just have to 'dose enough K' and assume we have good levels until we see problems. (same goes for Iron dosing, btw).

There's not a lot of K in KH2PO4 either, when you consider we only need 1-2ppm of PO4. In fact none of the fert calculators I've seen even will calculate the amount of K in a solution of KH2PO4.

But I digress...

Tell us all about your dosing routine, tank size, lighting, and what the CO2 levels are at if you're injecting.

 

[Simpte]

Thats a very good point, Malkore. I have nothing but high light tanks and thus have the need for dosing quite a bit of KNO3 (5ml every other day).

 

[malkore]

Yeah, and my cichlid tank, I find it hard to keep NO3 under 20ppm. Once I change my canopy to a smaller, lighter design that I can remove by myself, I may start doing a smaller 25% change mid-week to control nitrates, and mainly to remove the detris buildup that causes my higher nitrates.

Just another good example of how every tank is unique, and thus a 'one size fits all' dosing regimen will always be a pipe dream. (also the reason I dislike true PMDD dosing, and prefer Barr's EI method)

 

[Zezmo]

I recently switched to EI, in doing so set up a speadsheet to calculate all levels of nutrients. What I learned was that I was adding huge amounts of K. This came from the Equilibrium I was using to buffer the GH in my RO/DI water. I also use KNO3. The result was massive K, over 60ppm. Yet, those exact plants got holes just like that in the tank. So I certainly agree it looks like K deficiency. Just my personal experience in a similar case, tells me to keep looking for the problem.

 

[Rxblade123]

The only fish that touches that plant is the cory in the pic. He's the only one that rests on the leaves. Oh and that leaf is a new leaf, it might look like older leaf because I was pulling it down to get a better picture of the holes. My light fixture is the 40 Watt Satellite. And I dose Seachem Nitrogen, Potassium, and Phosphate. According to http://www.leon-huang.com/doser/ I dose 10 ppm of Nitrogen, 1 ppm of Phosphate and 10 ppm of Potassium. Btw thats the only plant that has those holes. The 3 other larger Hygrophila don't have it and the other 7 smaller Hygrophila don't have it either.