Nutrient deficiency? Or overload?

[beantownbrad]

The leaves on a few of my plants are wrinkling and fading in color. Their colors aren't as vibrant. And many of my older leaves are covered in spots.
I'm seeing my newest anubias begin to wrinkle around the edges and I really want to stop that from happening!!
What's the shortest I can leave the lights on to nourish the plants but keep algae down?




My small anubias is also covered in black spots.


I dose with: Iron, excel, trace, potassium (2x) and Flourish.
Lights on for 7 hours.
Some indirect sun light that I'm experimenting on cutting down with a blanket.

48w T5 HO bulbs
20 Gallon tank

 

[NYgiantsRP]

With all of those ferts i would say over. I found that with adding ferts i had more algae and not much more plant growth. I now add nothing to my tank. I grow anubias, cambomba, swords, crypto, java fern, anacharis, and Staurogyne repens with just 8 hours of 2 18w t5 ho. They dont grow fast, but i dont have algae.

 

[beantownbrad]

Do you have C02?

I'm a little concerned about cutting off plant nutrients all together after 2 years. But I need to cut down on algae. Small dots on the plants. Green on the glass.

So what's with the yellowing leaves, starting to wrinkle?

 

[Mebbid]

Honestly, with that light level it sounds like you are under fertilizing your plants.

I would highly recommend switching to using dry ferts in either a pps pro or an EI fertilizing schedule. The liquid ferts are good for low light tanks, but nothing other than that imho. Doing that will also save you some money as the dry ferts are cheap and last forever.

are you using any root tabs?

 

[beantownbrad]

I do use root tabs, every few inches near the base of all root plants.
My only C02 is excel.
The substrate is definitely not the best, it's just plain small aquarium gravel.

I've never looked into dry ferts, I'll do some research. I have 2.5 w / gal. Would that be considered high?

 

[Mebbid]

I do use root tabs, every few inches near the base of all root plants.
My only C02 is excel.
The substrate is definitely not the best, it's just plain small aquarium gravel.

I've never looked into dry ferts, I'll do some research. I have 2.5 w / gal. Would that be considered high?

watts per gallon is a fairly useless measurement. What type of lights are they? LED, T8, T5, T5HO?

 

[NYgiantsRP]

I used excel.