I kill everything

With floating plants the issue is almost always a nutrient deficiency. Plant need 14 nutrients to grow. If you are short on just one your plant will look like this and die.



I have seen Slavinia and duckweed survive complexly under water. Dispite what everyone says plants getting wet is not the issue.

floating plants have access to all the CO2 they need and plants can get by with very little light and yet don't die in extremely bright light of direct sunlight. So if it isn't light and CO2 , it has to be a nutrients plants issue..

If so why did did Flourish comprehensive fail to resolve the issue. Seachem like many other aquarium fertilizer companies assume you are using tap water so they take advantage of that by not supplying nutrient that are common in tap water. magnesium, calcium, zinc, copper, and chloride are often not in the fertilizer or are only present at very low levels that are insufficient for good plant growth. Also many fertilizers assume you overstock your tank. So the fish waist might be present at a high enough levels to help.

Flourish comprehensive has less than 1/10th of copper a plant can consume in a week. It also has less than 1/20th of the needed Zinc. If you have zinc plated iron pipes you would have enough zinc but since the 60's Copper has been used. But today new homes probably have plastic pipes.

Tap water also typically has Calcium and magnesium, which are detected by your GH kit. You have enough. But in some places the water will have very little in it. Plant need almost as much Calcium as potassium. And magnesium is needed at levels similar to phosphorous. And yet flourish has levels close to the amount of iron, a trace nutrient.

Now if your lucky your tap water and flourish will work well. But for me my RO water it didn't because, my water had no calcium, magnesium, copper, zinc, and chloride. And everything died in my tan, including duckweed and the plants in the substrate.

YOur submerged plants are probably ding ok due to low light levels. At low light levels they can get by with low nutrient levels. While the floating plants get more light and therefore cannot get by with what is in the water column. If you are using root tabs the nutrients the nutrients might be trapped in the substate with little to no nurtirnets in the water column for the floating plants.

I eventually resolved my issues by making my own fertilizer. But it might be possible with a different fertilizer. Using this fertilizer calculator. 22.3ml of flourish trace for every 10 gallons of water would get your trace nutrient levels near what I now use Zinc will be a bit higher than I dose and Molybdenum is a little lower than I would like but I think it would work. It all depends on what you have or don't have in your water source. If doesn't have iron so you would have to fertilize with iron to 0.1ppm. You could use Seachem iron but it doesn't last long in the water. So I would break the iron dose to 0.03ppm over 3 days during the week. Do a 50% water change once a week to remove any buildup.

If that doesn't work your might have a phosphate or potassium deficiency.
Here's a new photo since this thread was first posted, to see how bad it has deteriorated. Just rotting away.
Can't dose higher copper, I have shrimp.
20200819_002351.jpg


Look at my frogbit now. Isn't it lovely???

And the salvinia sinks itself.
 
Can't dose higher copper, I have shrimp.

All living things need copper to live. Especially shrimpsince they copper based blood (mammals have iron based blood). I also have shrimp in my tank and I maintain Cu levels at 0.01ppm (10PPB). I have pushed it to 0.02ppm and have seen no adverse effects. Legally tap water may have a maximum of 1.1ppm. My tap water (never used in my aquarium) has 0.05ppm of Cu in it.

Note I maintain 0.1ppm Fe, 0.05ppm Mn, 0.02ppm B, 0.03ppm Zn, 0.01ppm Cu, 0.005ppm Mo, 0.001ppm Ni. I add a GH booster I make from Calcium chloride and magnesium sulfate. Then add potassium nitrate and potassium phosphate To complete the fertilization of the water.
 
Last edited:
I don't have a scientific argument as I have no incentive to understand the science. I also have no reason (or inclination) to test my water for trace elements. So instead I wandered over to my community tank this morning and took 2 photos.
This tank has RO water with nothing added. KH and GH are both 0, substrate is inert sand. pH is around 5.3 which means nitrate is also 0. I add the recommended dose of TNC lite once a week and do a 75% water change once a week. Previously I did the same with Flourish comprehensive. No preference in this, they were out of stock of Flourish when I ran out. Everything else in the water comes from the fish and or their food :whistle:
1598002777193.jpeg20200821_101324.jpg
 
I don't have a scientific argument as I have no incentive to understand the science. I also have no reason (or inclination) to test my water for trace elements.
I feel less guilty now about getting completely lost when trace elements for plants comes up. If Seangee can get by and have tanks that look like that without knowing all about it, hopefully I can too!
 
I think I'll just have to settle on floating hornwort and anacharis in my larger tanks since they do just fine and thrive.

Everything else... ill mark it as not worth my efforts lol
 

Most reactions

Back
Top