Bubbles Anyone?

[tomtomtom1230]

Hey people!

After coming back from my holiday and getting my tank stats back on par with where it used to be, I noticed something. After doing my twice-a-week fert dosing (which includes Flourish Excel, Flourish Trace and half doses of potassium and phosphate with a little iron) I noticed when left an hour or so, small clear bubbles appear on the underside of all the leaves of the plants. My first guess is that this is something to do with photosynthesis and the expelling of waste gases from the plants (ie; oxygen etc). I wondered if I could get a more in-depth description and explanation to why this happens? If I am correct in thinking that it is photosynthesis at work in my low-tech setup, then Flourish Excel would be the cause since this is the only carbon product I add to the water (aside from what comes out of the taps once a week when I reset my fertilizer 'baseline' and do a water change).

Shame I went away, that one week has taken it's toll on my plants - some of the leaves are turning an odd yellowy-brown colour so I'm guessing I'll have to do some pruning on my next water change before the leaves die off completely?

Thanks for taking the time to look at my queries, thanks again if you can answer them

 

[tomtomtom1230]

Bump

 

[hensonc4098]

It's pretty much as you said - it's known as pearling and shows that your plants are very healthy! Normally people only get pearling from the plants if they are using pressurised CO2.

It happens when you add liquid CO2 because then the plant goes a bit mental with processing lots of CO2 and therefore producing lots of oxygen bubbles.

Well done anyway on the healthy plants.

The leaves that have turned a bit brown are probably best trimmed off. Then the plant can focus it's energy on producing new, healthy leaves

 

[tomtomtom1230]

Fantastic, thanks Hensonc, I just wanted to know that I understood it correctly! I'm pretty glad my plants know their behind from their elbows where photosynthesis is concerned Plants are all pruned and my EI is back to normal as of this morning. Thanks for clearing it up again.

 

[hensonc4098]

No problems If you look on youtube and google, you'll see videos and pictures of full blown pearling where there's bubbles coming off the plants everywhere - it looks like a glass of lemonade