How do you get your plants to pearl?

[AshleyXavier]

Hi, I am just wondering why I could not get my plants to pearl.. even for my riccia fuitians. Some other plants I have are Water Sprite and Vallesneria.

My lighting is approx 3.6WPG (55W PC on a 15G 2ftX1.5ftX1ft tank)
I have injected CO2 from a pressured tank at a rate of 1 bubble per sec

The plants are growing well and I add potassium and trace elements regularly. Substrate is approx 2.5inch and I have also inserted fertilizer tabs into the substrate.

Anyone have any suggestions? or viewpoints that you like to share?

 

[travis simonson]

My guess is that you are not injecting enough CO2, though without knowing your pH and KH measurements it's hard to say for sure. Can you provide those for us please. Riccia should pearl within a few hours of lights-on if you have adequate CO2 levels. It is also possible that your tank is NO3 and/or PO4 deficient as it does not appear that you are supplementing these macronutrients. What are your NO3 and PO4 levels? They may be deficient, but NO3 and PO4 deficiencies alone are not likely to prevent pearling in Riccia.

 

[malkore]

That or your stocking levels. What fish and how many?

Pearling is all about oxygen saturation. So either you aren't getting enough CO2 or other nutrients in there to get the plants to photosynthesize enough to saturate the water with O2...
or you have a high enough fish load that they are preventing O2 saturation.

 

[sherry]

oh my, I never realized that my love of a slightly high fish load could prevent plant pearling.. hmmm... more decisions to make!!!

 

[Jchillin]

Well, you could have asked me. I have a high bio-load as well (love naturally produced NO3) and I only see pearling after a late evening PWC.

 

[malkore]

I have a higher fish load, though within reason. I typically only get pearling later in the evening and its never extremely heavy.

 

[czcz]

(Since there are questions hanging before troubleshooting this tank, anyway... )

You can still acheive O2 saturation in a heavily stocked tank, and therefore with a really happy plant producing lots of O2, see intense pearling, though. I have what some would consider to be an overstocked 8g, but keep O2 high via reverse photoperiod connected tank (only ~2g of additional water) and see pearling within an hour of lights on. This also happened when I had a higher fish stock in the main and a huge breeding colony of shrimp in a higher volume (10g) fuge. It's only harder to get intense pearling early with an overstocked tank, as O2 from plants must be higher than O2 consumed by animals. Of course, as said, it's not as if the tank has less love and effort if there is no pearling from healthy plants.

Re: inducing heavy pearling: I get it when dosing KH2PO4 or my micro sol. (Excel + CSM+B+Fe), regardless of the time in the photoperiod.

 

[sherry]

how often do you dose the excel plus csm b fe ?

 

[czcz]

Every other day. Here is the thread, calcs, and pics for it, if interested.

 

[hashbaz]

Does surface agitation cause O2 to outgas? I would assume this could contribute to the problem. LOTS of FAST growing plants would also help.

 

[azn_fishy55]

My plants pearl,espeacially with my riccia,water sprite,and cabomba furcata.But I don't really like the look of pearling,espeacially when your algae is pearling too.But maybe I get pearling alot because I have a light fish load right now.

 

[AshleyXavier]

Phew, thanks people. I finally got it to pearl.

I guess it's a mixture of issues, the main one being my surface agitation is still pretty high although I had turn down the filtration. I'm using a canister filter, now I turn it to a min that I don't see much surface agitation.

The other factor was from my external fan which is mounted on the top of the tanks to cool the tank, now I use it to blow at my lights instead. Blowing on the surface also causes quite a fair bit of agitation. Overall, I must have lost too much CO2 in the water.

Lastly, I do have a slightly over-stocked tank. But this does not seems to affect much once I have rectify the above 2 issues. My riccia started to pearl less than an hour

 

[AshleyXavier]

My plants pearl,espeacially with my riccia,water sprite,and cabomba furcata.But I don't really like the look of pearling,espeacially when your algae is pearling too.But maybe I get pearling alot because I have a light fish load right now.

Phew, at least the slight algae I have don't pearl. Neither does my water sprite at the moment.. Perhaps it's due to my trimming the day before..

Luckily my plants are mostly out-competing my algae for nutrients and the rest are being taken care of by my SAE, Ottocinclus & snails..