fertilizer for wysteria and amazon swords

[royta]

I have a 28 gallon bowfront planted with Amazon Sword and Wysteria and am using pool filter sand for substrate. Both plant types used to thrive, but now the Wysteria has stopped growing and the Amazon Sword leaves are becoming transparent, paper thin, and a very light brown.

Is Seachem Flourish a suitable liquid fertilizer for these plants?

 

[aqua_chem]

What are your parameters, including nitrate and light?

 

[royta]

Low light. A single T8 the width of the tank. The fact the plants used to rapidly grow for the first 7 months or so until a couple months ago on the current light setup leads me to believe it is not the light.

I'll admit I've let nitrate get too high in the past, but I've been good at keeping it low now. I'm not at home and don't have the numbers off the top of my head. Yellow, not red.

 

[royta]

I'm hoping to get all water parameters tonight...ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and pH. I'll report back. Until then, here's a picture of the Amazon Sword.

 

[epiphysis]

I would suggest you get some root fertiliser under that sword very quick.

Then cut of the affected leaves and see what happens.

 

[daileene]

Amazon sword is a heavy root feeder plant. They don't benefit from liquid fertilizers. They get nutrients from the roots so that is when you need root tabs especially that you have sand as a substrate. Sand do not have too much nutrients as some other substrate does (like ecocomplete, floramax, flourite, etc.) So root tabs will be your next best friend for the sword.

 

[royta]

What brand of root fertilizer tabs? The Seachem stuff?

 

[daileene]

The seachem one is highly recommended but there are also other brands like API and Jungle

 

[royta]

I added a 2.5ml dose of Flourish already. How does the Wysteria respond to liquid ferts?

Thanks for the help everyone.

Roy

 

[daileene]

Wisterias benefit from both. Their roots gets pretty big and needs the nutrients underneath as well as their leaves on top.

 

[aqua_chem]

To say that amazon swords dont benefit from water column fertilization isn't accurate. They will benefit from both forms, but will respond to root ferts better than water ferts. Most root tabs are mostly micronutrients. A lot of their macronutrients are going to come from the water.

Wisteria is almost completely a water column feed. They have good root systems, sure, but large roots do not necessarily indicate that they are getting significant nutrients from them. Rather, it's probably a result of its native environment requiring a strong hold on the substrate (perhaps due to strong current).

 

[daileene]

My bad. I was just trying to relate what I have been told before when I first started out. But I believe in your knowledge. Thanks for that clarification. Now I have learned more important things.