Alternanthera reineckii - trimming and deficiency question?

[newfound77951]

My Alternanthera reineckii is starting to look a little sad....and is in need of a trim. I've heard anecdotal reports that the plant doesn't like trimming...anyone have experience pruning this plant?

Also, it has a bad case of green spot algae (elsewhere in the tank, too) and many of the leaves are now curling up. It generally just looks bad. I dose CSM+B, N, P and K as well as Excel every other day or so. N is around 10-15 ppm, P around 2 ppm. I dose the CSM+B at 0.1 ppm Fe. Potassium about 20 ppm a week. My sword plants are very happy, as are all my other plants. Light is 192 watts PC (~4 wpg), CO2 is 2x 1 liter DIY. Substrate is EcoComplete.

Here it was a few weeks ago, it's in the left-center background. Looks pretty good here!

Here it is now:

closeup:

 

[czcz]

I think you need a lot more than 2L of any DIY CO2 mix and is likely the problem. Suggest doubling your CSM+B dose to 0.2ppm Fe. Also may want to give the plant more room to spread out: while such high light allows dense planting, as you're doing with Myriophyllum sp, A. reineckii seems to want to spread its leaves out a little more.

FWIW I also find it a tricky plant to trim because it doesn't branch quickly after removing tops and grows sooooo slow for a stem plant. I prefered to remove side shoots and replant them, then wait patiently. I had butchered the plant trying other things.

 

[newfound77951]

i think it definitely needs more room....I'll thin it out and try replanting some of the better looking side stems. It does grow really slowly.

All the "rules" say I don't have enough CO2 but boy does everything else grow fast....if I had pressurized I think my tank would take over my apartment in a week! I don't have the $$$ for it anyway.

 

[czcz]

Yeah, interesting. How old is the tank? Just curious.

 

[malkore]

just FYI, when posting pics this large...you might wanna resize, or just post a link to the picture.

They are nasty to download even with broadband at nearly 1meg per photo...I feel bad for those on dialup.

very nice pics tho

 

[newfound77951]

Yeah, I need to get Photoshop...my camera program doesn't do a good job with resizing! I'm spoiled, at work we have a high speed network so I don't even notice. Even at home on the wireless it's not too bad. But dialup....ugh. I don't know how to post a link to a picture...tell me how, and I'll do it!

The tank has been set up since February. I trim out a couple of handfuls of plant material every week or so.

 

[maxwell1295]

If you can set the camera to take pics at a lower resolution, that would decrease the file size and the physical size of the pics. If that doesn't work, irfanview is a really nice and easy to use photo editor.

 

[Zezmo]

I have been growing this plant for a while. Usually it grows up very nice for a while but after it gets 12 inches tall or so some of the lower leaves get a bit "melty". That is when I pull the entire plant and cut off all the side shoots. That can be 25+ stems. I will plant 2-3 of the nicest ones. The rest go into a clipping tank until they get sold at auction or traded at the next plant swap. This plant gets harvested about every two months like this.

Right after planting there is almost no growth until the roots grow in, that is a week or two. After that it grows like a typical weed.
Here are clippings at two weeks.
http://webpages.charter.net/zezmo/72-centermound-week2.JPG

Here is two weeks later, in mid may.
http://webpages.charter.net/zezmo/72-center-mound-2.JPG

It is now one month later, mid June, and I harvested mine this week because it was about to break the surface. I ended up with more plantlets than I know what to do with. i replanted like 5. There are some 30 odd more floating out in the garage.
From what I have seen this plant demands high CO2 and High light.

 

[malkore]

to link to a picture, use the URL button instead of the IMG button, which is what Zezmo did in his reply.

Irfanview is a good photo editor, so is GiMP, and I think Google tools has something called Picasso that'll resize specifically for web use (so I have heard).