Alternanthera reineckii salvageable?

[fishfood!!]

Are my Alternanthera reineckii salvageable? They were doing good for low tech tank for a while and getting really healthy growth, almost doubled in size and growing 1 stem node per week until I got some amano shrimps. I never actually caught the shrimps in the act but I suspect the amanos damaged the leaves while grazing on the algae. 1st photo is before amano shrimps. The Rest of photos are after. It has been about 2-3 weeks since I relocated the shrimps but AR not bounced back yet. Minus 3-4 days for blackout as a desperate attempt to remove any algae on the leaves to give the AR a last chance to be healthy. If you can see in the photos, a lot of the upper leaves are melting. I trimmed a lot of leaves away in the past 2-3 weeks to remove any damaged ones, now I am reluctant to trim anymore! Bottom leaves are doing okay. Some of them actually perked up after the blackout.

Let me know what you think and if there is anything I should add or take away to increase the chance.

Substrate is caribsea eco complete. Nitrate 5-10ppm. I have flourish tabs all around the tank for NPK and rely on eco complete for the micros. I dose excel daily and flourish and flourish iron 2-3 times a week. Light is on 6 hours (tank is fairly new. Put together March of this year)

Any insight advise on what I should do will be great

Another question I have is, is this a result of deficiency or my amano. Since I never caught the shrimps in the act, I can’t be certain which it is....[emoji27][emoji47][emoji848]

Thank you
Alan

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[Colin_T]

Shrimp don't normally damage plants and will pick algae off plants so are helpful in controlling some types of algae.

If the algae wipes off in a film then it is blue green algae (aka Cyanobacter bacteria). It also looks like there is a bit of black beard algae (BBA) too. Black beard algae is introduced via contaminated water introducing the algal spores to your tank. Cyanobacteria are everywhere there is water and love light, nutrients and minimal water movement.

Regular water changes and gravel cleaning help with Cyanobacteria but is hard to do in a heavily planted tank. Reducing the dry food can sometimes help. If your light globes are more than 12 months old, perhaps change them (assuming they are fluorescent), and get globes with a 6500K rating. Increase water movement around the bottom of the tank.

Alteranthera species are not true aquatic plants and do best when they have moist/ wet feet and dry leaves.

 

[NickAu]

 

[Colin_T]

Are the shrimp in the video being fed anything? Normally shrimp are scavengers that eat anything and only resort to eating plants if they are hungry.

 

[NickAu]

No idea,

 

[fishfood!!]

I had a cherry shrimp that wasn’t doing so well due to molting. The amanos ate it as well. The next day, I found parts of the cherry shrimp.


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[Byron]

The photos suggest a possible light issue. Stem plants in general need stronger (more intense) lighting because they are faster growing. This species, Alternanthera reineckii being red leaved, needs even more, particularly red spectrum. Red plants reflect reed light, so they need more of it because red is also the primary driver of photosynthesis. No light data is provided, so the intensity and/or the spectrum could be involved.

Nutrients may also be a factor. Eco-complete in my experience is useless as a nutrient source, so you should not expect any macros from that. Which brings us to the question, what is the GH of your source water? This is your prime source of the "hard" minerals, one being calcium 9the other magnesium) and the photos also suggest possible calcium deficiencies. I have dealt with this myself, having very soft water. Flourish Tabs do help with this, I rely on these for calcium/magnesium for my swords, in addition to Flourish Comprehensive.

I would discontinue the Excel, this is not going to help much depending upon the light and other minerals, and it can decimate some plants. It is also dangerous for any fish and shrimp.

Flourish iron is also very dangerous because it is easy to lead to an excess. The iron in Flourish Comp is balanced to the other nutrients, and as there seem to be issues here with possibly light and/or nutrients, adding excess iron will cause issues for many plants. I have seen what is shown in the photos occur from iron excess too. And to make matters even worse, when calcium is insufficient, some plants use iron and this kills the leaves as they can only store so much iron.

Nutrients have to be carefully balanced; the 17 required nutrients have quite specific proportional relationship. Flourish Comprehensive on its own has this balance built in. So adding any one of the nutrients additionally can cause serious issues for some plants.

 

[fishfood!!]

The photos suggest a possible light issue. Stem plants in general need stronger (more intense) lighting because they are faster growing. This species, Alternanthera reineckii being red leaved, needs even more, particularly red spectrum. Red plants reflect reed light, so they need more of it because red is also the primary driver of photosynthesis. No light data is provided, so the intensity and/or the spectrum could be involved.

Nutrients may also be a factor. Eco-complete in my experience is useless as a nutrient source, so you should not expect any macros from that. Which brings us to the question, what is the GH of your source water? This is your prime source of the "hard" minerals, one being calcium 9the other magnesium) and the photos also suggest possible calcium deficiencies. I have dealt with this myself, having very soft water. Flourish Tabs do help with this, I rely on these for calcium/magnesium for my swords, in addition to Flourish Comprehensive.

I would discontinue the Excel, this is not going to help much depending upon the light and other minerals, and it can decimate some plants. It is also dangerous for any fish and shrimp.

Flourish iron is also very dangerous because it is easy to lead to an excess. The iron in Flourish Comp is balanced to the other nutrients, and as there seem to be issues here with possibly light and/or nutrients, adding excess iron will cause issues for many plants. I have seen what is shown in the photos occur from iron excess too. And to make matters even worse, when calcium is insufficient, some plants use iron and this kills the leaves as they can only store so much iron.

Nutrients have to be carefully balanced; the 17 required nutrients have quite specific proportional relationship. Flourish Comprehensive on its own has this balance built in. So adding any one of the nutrients additionally can cause serious issues for some plants.

My GH is 9-11. I use equilibrium to add back to my RO/DI water. I also use flourish tabs.

I have the Eheim Power LED that came with the 9 gallon nano tank. The tank/filter/light set is the Eheim 9 gallon Aquastyle. Although I don’t think this is high light but at least low to medium. Eheim website says the light is 1300 lux.

I don’t know....my LFS owner told me these are all low light. My references online also checks out.


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[fishfood!!]

Here is a photo of the exact same tank and light model from another person. It’s not my tank but this person eventually grew his tank out. Another person also informed he grows low to medium light plants with this tank set up. Just no high light ‍

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[Byron]

I cannot offer much about the light as I am unfamiliar with it. LED is light I have not had success with, though I admit I have not tried the very expensive "plant" units. I will leave this for those with more experience in LED.

As for A. reineckii, this is a plant requiring bright light. As I explained previously, red is very important (LED often is very low in red light, depending upon the LED). The "rosaefolia" cultivar can be grown in lower light (according to sources) although it will not be as robust. If lower leaves rot when the upper stem is healthy, it is a sign of inadequate light. In your photos, thee upper leaves are rotting apart, so while this may be related to light, if it is not strong enough or lacks red, it is also likely some of the other issues I mentioned.

Which brings me to the nutrients. The GH at 9 to 11 (presumably dGH, not ppm) is fine, so no issues with calcium. Though having said that, other plants may be using more calcium, but from your initial photos I would not expect this. The iron is probably a problem, and the Excel. Substrate tabs do not provide much for stem plants, as these take in more nutrients via the leaves that plants rooted more in the substrate (swords, crypts, etc). So liquid fertilizers are more helpful.

BTW, in the latest photos of the other person's tank, the upper plant is Wisteria, Hygrophila difformis, which is also high light but will manage with less than can A. reineckii, in my experience. I have never had sufficient light for the latter, but a few years ago I did have good results with H. difformis (see photo attached), and this was/is my brightest light tank as it is a 70g which is only 20 inches in height with two T8 4-foot tubes. That is still not intense light of course, moderate at best, but it was sufficient for the Wisteria.

 

[fishfood!!]

I cannot offer much about the light as I am unfamiliar with it. LED is light I have not had success with, though I admit I have not tried the very expensive "plant" units. I will leave this for those with more experience in LED.

As for A. reineckii, this is a plant requiring bright light. As I explained previously, red is very important (LED often is very low in red light, depending upon the LED). The "rosaefolia" cultivar can be grown in lower light (according to sources) although it will not be as robust. If lower leaves rot when the upper stem is healthy, it is a sign of inadequate light. In your photos, thee upper leaves are rotting apart, so while this may be related to light, if it is not strong enough or lacks red, it is also likely some of the other issues I mentioned.

Which brings me to the nutrients. The GH at 9 to 11 (presumably dGH, not ppm) is fine, so no issues with calcium. Though having said that, other plants may be using more calcium, but from your initial photos I would not expect this. The iron is probably a problem, and the Excel. Substrate tabs do not provide much for stem plants, as these take in more nutrients via the leaves that plants rooted more in the substrate (swords, crypts, etc). So liquid fertilizers are more helpful.

BTW, in the latest photos of the other person's tank, the upper plant is Wisteria, Hygrophila difformis, which is also high light but will manage with less than can A. reineckii, in my experience. I have never had sufficient light for the latter, but a few years ago I did have good results with H. difformis (see photo attached), and this was/is my brightest light tank as it is a 70g which is only 20 inches in height with two T8 4-foot tubes. That is still not intense light of course, moderate at best, but it was sufficient for the Wisteria.

Nice tank!

Yes I hear you. Perhaps AR is not the best plant for this tank.



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[Stan510]

I'm 2 years too late,but is that a snail on the glass? I would say that's the culprit.
The new pink growth looks nice-lol,but I guess its really not supposed to do that..so you have some deficiency. I would look for iron as the need.