Soft Stems on Narrow Leaf Ludwigia

[LindaC]

Does anyone know what causes the stems of plants to become so soft that they practically disintegrate? My Ludwigia, which I have in two different places is melting away, the stems are breaking because they are so soft. This happened once before with this plant. Funny though, I had this plant last year and it grew like crazy and now, it's dying on me.

I'm wondering if lack of calcium could be the cuase. My water is very soft, I stopped buffering my water, although the stems were soft before I stopped adding Baking Soda. I inject pressurized CO2, KH is now at 40. GH is 40 and PH is 6.5 but the lights and CO2 just came on about an hour ago, so it should fall down to 6.2 by later this afternoon. I just turned it up a little too!

I dose macros and micros every other day. I have a heavy fish load so I only does 2/8ths KNO3 and 1/16th of K2SO4 and one ml of Fleet for phosphate. Macros I dose at 5ml of Seachem Flourish. Would adding calcium of some sort help my stems?

Oh, the lights over this tank (29 gallon) are 65 watts and the photo period is 10 hours.

Any thoughs or advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[Purrbox]

Have you tested your Nitrates and Phosphates lately? I suspect that one or both may be bottoming out despite your dosing. If this is the case, uping your dosing slightly should do the trick.

 

[LindaC]

Hi Purrbox, I just checked my phosphates and nitrates and they seem fine, phosphate is 2.0 - 2.5 ppms and nitrate is actually a little high, almost 40 ppms, although I just dosed my tank with ferts about a half hour ago, does that matter? My fish load in this tank is pretty heavy, I currently have 5 Kribs, the males are pretty large, a pair of Blue Rams (small), a pair of Apistogrammas (small), 4 Serpae Tetras and a pair of Ottos. I'd like to move the apistos over to my 10 gallon but can't catch them, I've tried many times.

Any other thoughts?

 

[Purrbox]

Based on that I would say that you're probably on the right track looking at your GH. If it were me, I'd try dosing some Calcium and Magnesium to up your GH to about 70-80ppm (4dGH) and see how it goes after a couple of weeks of dosing.

http://www.rexgrigg.com/./waterchem.htm

 

[rkilling1]

I would agree, that the GH, or lacking of one of the components, is the problem.

You can pickup some Mg++ with Epsom salts at rite ad or the like.

And the CaCL2 for Ca++ at any pool store.

Or you can purchase Seachem Equilibrium from an LFS or Barr's GH booster from Greg watson.

 

[LindaC]

I have a bottle of Seachen Equilibrium, I've never used it. One of the reasons is that it clouds the water, do you know if there is any way of getting around this? Also, on the bottle it says that it's good to use with RO of DI water, does it make a difference if I use regular tap water?

I have Epsom Salts and I could order some calcium from Gregg Watson, just not sure which is the best form to purchase, I was thinking Calcium Sulfate, is this correct?

I just read that link you posted Purrbox and see that Rex Griggs recommends Calcium Chloride, so I will order that. I have to place an order for some Potassium Phosphate so I might as well order the calcium too. I would like to try the Equilibrium, does anyone know if it clouds the water for a long period of time or as the bottle states, 15-20 minutes.

Many thanks for the help!
Linda