Aquatic Plant Newbie in Need of Help

[dmcnamara]

I've kept plants in my tanks forever, but have always struggled with rooted plants (despite the use of root tabs, potentially related to the fact that they haven't really taken root in my gravel substrate).

I'm trying to finally figure out what they need and what I've been doing wrong.

Any advice that the group can offer would be greatly appreciated!

1. Does anyone ever get conflicting test results on water quality tests? There are a couple measures that seem to vary between my API Master Test Kit, my Tetra 6-in-1 Test Strips, and my JNW Direct Aquarium 9-in-1 Test Strips.
   
2. Does anyone have a preference on C02 indicators/tests?
   
3. Based on guides I've seen on various plant appearances relative to possible nutrient deficiencies, I initially thought the issues I was seeing in my plants related to Iron, Phosphorous, and possibly C02. Based on what I'm seeing in these test results, between all my tanks, Iron is 0-5.0 and Phosphate is 0.25-0.5, while Nitrate is 0-20.0 depending on which test kit I use.
   
4. Can someone explain what my target should be between Phosphate/Phosphorous, Nitrate/Nitrogen, and Potassium?

 

[Caliban07]

Hello,

I’ll try to summarise this as quickly as possible as I type on the fly.

Before testing it’s best to know what is going on with your source water. Is it hard or is it soft? Most plants can use the carbonate hardness from harder water to fulfil their carbon requirements. They take the carbonates in and convert them to carbon dioxide which is what the plant needs to complete the Calvin cycle (not important to understand) just know that this is a more laborious and time consuming process than direct co2 uptake so growth is slower.

This is why most rooted and/or said to be ‘easy or low tech’ plants like crypts, swords, Anubis etc.. generally do well for the vast majority of people. That is because the vast majority of people reporting on forums come from harder water areas. Harder source water also supply an abundance of plant necessary minerals and so if you perform regular water changes then ‘Tadaaa’ very few plant issues occur.

However, if your water is carbonate and nutrient poor then all plants except potentially some floating plants or bulb plants will struggle.

So forget testing. What is BEST to know is what YOU are putting in because that is a more accurate measure. We know that nutrients by themselves do not cause algae or, within reason, harm fish so if your water is nutrient poor you can dose the three macro nutrients nitrogen (N) potassium (K) and phosphorus (P) the lesser macro magnesium (Mg) and the micros calcium, iron, zinc, manganese etc. and most importantly, if you do not want to inject co2 you must increase the carbonate hardness (KH) SLOWLY. The plants cannot do anything with the root tab minerals without energy from sugar and they need carbon to make this.

There are many ways to raise KH and I recommend an increase of absolutely no more the 2dKH at a time. I use dolomite powder which is calcium magnesium carbonate but it has poor solubility and turns the water milky for a day UNLESS you are using injected co2 which decreases the pH and allows the dolomite to dissolve.

I would recommend potassium bicarbonate as most all potassium compounds are relatively soluble.

Carbonate hardness is also important for the nitrogen cycle which is why I use it to buffer my water in conjunction with injected co2.