# What deficincy causes transparent leaves?



## Adrian

Hi,

I have 35 gallon heavily planted tank set up 4 month ago. 
Light is 2X55W compact, 11 hours daily with a break in the middle.
Filter Eheim 2224
Co2 from yeast fermentatio0n (well, that is the main limitation on the system, I am working on pressurized bottle, for now I dose Excell as directed).

2 month ago I had minor infestation of BBA and I eliminated it over a week with overdose of Excell (worked like a charm).

I swithed 3 weeks ago to EI dosing as per guide. I noticed better plant growth which not I could call satisfactory, but by no means it is rapid.

The problem with deficiency causing parts of leaves to be transparent has happened before EI, and not it does not go away. It looks like I am coming short somewhere, hovewer the time frame is still too short to be certain.

The most affected plants are saggitarias and some parts of ehinodorus blehri. Older leaves become transparent as if the underlying matter moved somewhere elese leaving the skeleton. 

In addition to this Hygrophilia corymbosa shows chlorotic dots which over time become necrotic (this process has considerably slowed down since I introduced EI)

Green cabomba tends to have long stems between each set of leaves.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Adrian


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## redstrat

What are you actually dosing, whats your tank size, all of this might help get things started here...

My first impressions when I was reading your post is to look at Calcium and Mg. I have recently had a similar problem but it was only in one of my plants, I didnt catch it right away and I lost almost all of the plant except for one stem. Even after I corrected the problem it was slow to start recovering. I dont have any experience with the particular plants you mentioned so I'm just going to have to make general judgements. I thought it was very odd though that I needed to dose more Ca and Mg when my GH from the tap was 8degrees. Anyway enough about me, let us know a little more about your tank water parameters and pretty much anything you know and maybe we can figure something out.


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## Adrian

*Tank Details*

Thanks Davis,

Here come the details:

Tank 35 gallon
Light 2X55 W compact fluorescent one bulb 6500K, second 10000K. 11 hours of light per day. Partially open top.
Filter Eheim 2224, standard setup - Ehfimeh, Ehfisubstrat and coarse and fine sponges.

Substrate: gravel 5 mm grain size.
Fertilization:

CO2 from yeast
EI method, 50% water changes weekly.
Barr's GH booster 1/16 tbl after water change
Here is what is contains, but I did not find what percentages of each:
Potassium Sulfate
Calcium Sulfate
Magnesium Sulfate
Manganese Sulfate
Iron Sulfate

Plantex CSM +B, 3 x week 1/16 tbl

1.5% Total Mg
0.10 Copper
7% iron
2.0% Mn
0.06 Molybdenum
0.40 Zinc

Macro:

Potassium nitrate - 1/4 tbl 3 x week
Potassium Sulfate - 1/16 tbl 3 x week
Mono Potassium Phosphate 1/16 tbl 3 x week

Fluorish Excel 5 ml every second day.

Stress coat water conditioner 1 tablespoon for 5 gallons of changed water.

Tap water parameters:

PH 7.0
GH 9
KH 5
Nitrates, Phosphates 0
Water treated with chlorine not chloramine. I do not know what percentage of Mg is responsible for the general hardness result.

Tank water parameters before the last water change

Nitrates - 5 ppm (I increased the added amount to address the issue and bring it to a comfortable 20 ppm)

Phosphates - 5 ppm
PH 7.0 (in the evening)
KH 4
GH 9
Nitrites, Ammonia - 0
I have not checked iron for a while....

Bioload:

Plants:
H. polysperma, h. corymbosa, cabomba aquatica, saggitaria, ehinodorus "red flame", ehinodorus blehri, ludvigia repens, saggitaria subulata, anubias barteri var nana, var bateri, "1705", vesicularia dubyana.

Fish - blackskirt tetra - 5
black neon - 6
neon - 12
ancistrus - 2
bronze cory - 3

I will try to include some pictures in the near future, but for now suffice to say that the tank is heavily planted (needs trimming quite badly)

Well, that is all I can say...

And this problem with transparent leaves is not a new thing - it was with me long before I started EI and was totally in the darkness as far as the fertilization. But now the problem seems to be increasing.

Again, thanks for help.

Adrian


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## redstrat

I'm also pretty new to EI, I've been playing with plants for long enough though to feel semi confident telling you this.. hopefully someone else can chime in and either back me up or give their advice...

I think its pretty safe to say that the reason the problem got worse after dosing the EI is because you then gave the plants slightly better conditions so they used up what was left of what was missing... I'm not sure if I'm explaining that well enough...

My guess would be Magnessium, mainly because you said you saw dots. If your dosing by EI your probably getting all the NPK you need so I'd rule them out.. This website is where I like to go for deficiency symptoms. It also seems to agree with Mg conclusion. You add some Mg using Epsom Salts from the drug store, its really magnesium sulfate.

I think the cabomba problem is unrelated though. Cabomba seems to be pretty tolerant, I have noticed that with Higher CO2 though that it seems to stretch more creating larger internodes (length of stem between leaves). I'm not really sure how to correct this other then trimming it regularly to get a bushier plant so it doesn't really apear to be so leggy. I'd love to hear another solution though if anybody has one.

Hope this helps


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## Adrian

"I think its pretty safe to say that the reason the problem got worse after dosing the EI is because you then gave the plants slightly better conditions so they used up what was left of what was missing... I'm not sure if I'm explaining that well enough..."

I was exactly thinking the same. Everything else got better, so the deficiency got worse. 


The problem with yellow dots is rather isolated - only on H. corymbosa and l. repens. Everything else which shows deficiency get those transparent leaves rather than chlorotic and then necrotic dots. I cannot find anywhere a deficiency that fits this scheme. I will try to include some photos in the near future. 

Adrian


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## redstrat

Calcium and Magnessium need to be in balance, I'm still working mine out. Its kinda tough because you dont always know whats in your tap water so unless your using RO/DI its not exact. Maybe you need a little of both. Mg defficency can also look like an Iron deficency. In that plant I was telling you about that I had a similar problem with... it was the only one in the tank that showed really any signs of defficency, it kinda slipped under the radar so to speak. Anyway the leaves were pretty transparent, it got worse when I started EI then I started to tweak the Mg and Ca and it stopped getting worse and is just now started to come back, I thought I lost the whole plant. Calcium and Magnesium play an important role in uptake of the other nutrients so they can be though to diagnose.


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## Avalon

Nitrogen deficiency causes transparent leaves in many plants; I slaughtered an entire stand of Ludwigia with low N--they all turned transparent and died. Increase your N and P. Just to give you an idea, I dose the same amount you do, if not more, in my highly lit 10g. And of course, increasing CO2 wouldn't hurt. The point of EI is to make sure nothing is deficient by creating excess. EI does work, but it also assumes maximum possible uptake. If you have the nutrients in check, then light vs. CO2 is the problem/answer.


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## Adrian

Nitrogen might be the answer, at least it confirms what another user on a different forum had said about it causing transparent leaves. Makes me wonder why nobody on the net ever listed this symptom as related to N deficiency. (at least to my knowledge) 
But this would be the answer to my prayers - the easiest solution, and I will try to increase it first. I just do not want to overdo it, let's say I will aim at 30 ppm before water change and we will see from there. Last week my nitrates were low at 5ppm, a decent increase it not going to hurt.

Light vs CO2 - I know that my CO2 is barely making it to PH 7.0 and nothing below, it makes a perfect sense to increase the output and that is in the works.

Back to calcium/magnesium hypothesis - how do I correct that? Magnesium with epsom salts, but how much to add? Then how do I know whether there should be more calcium or magnesium added? I guess I should call the city and find out what is in the water. 

I am also thinking that for the most parts plants showing the deficiency are acquiring nutrition through the roots (h ploysperma is unaffected for now). This problem was not as pronounced when I added fluorish tabs to the substrate. Maybe this is worth trying as well as the last supply become exhausted (I added those more than 2 month ago, at that time I did not have this issue).

Thanks for advice.

Adrian


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## Lord Nibbler

I had a problem with transparent spots in my Amazon sword leaves I think was from calcium or magnesium. Thanks to some advice from buckeyemolded, I started adding a little bit of aquarium salt (like 1 teaspoon for 40 gallons) once a week. It seems to have done the trick, all of the new growth for the past few weeks has no transparent spots.


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## Adrian

*Well, here goes Calcium - magnesium again*

Lord Nibbler, thanks for your answer. So here comes the second link to calcium magnesium deficiency. I have been adding some aquarium salt for some weeks and I am not sure whether this solved my problem (I have not observed it long enough to draw conclusions), I also add a bit more Barrs' GH booster (my water is 4 kh and 9 gh, so I figured it will not hurt). Well in the past week I did not observe any more transparent spots, and everything seems to grow well. But this let to another problem - my green cabomba stopped growing and slowly turns yellow (I rather drastically trimmed it last week). In my second 10 G tank the same cabomba with the same ferts grows like crazy....

I am going to do some water test later and see what the results are.


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## abnormalsanon

Adrian, I've had the same problem in one of my tanks. I've always wondered what the problem might be, and in my case it wouldn't be N--where I used to live the water out of tap had 20ppm nitrate and it only climbed higher during the week. I'm seeing less of the problem since I started EI (well, sort of EI, I dose less) but it's still occuring in a few Amazon sword leaves and some of my sag.


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## Adrian

Im my case N might be the cause - the problem was most prominent when I allowed N to drop to 5 ppm; but then I increased it to the point where I had 30ppm before my 50% water change (EI). It seems that the new development of transparent leaves has stopped, but I will need to dose this amount for at least 2 weeks to draw some solid conclusions, assuming that I will dose my macros and GH booster in the same fashion. Still it will be 
not conclusive because with an increase of N I also increased GH booster....

Here are my test results from one hour ago:
N-30 ppm 
P-2 ppm
GH-6 
KH - 9
PH 7.6

To things to notice:
With GH booster it was my Kh which increased by 2 while GH remained the same....
My CO2 is dying and it is now the limiting factor. I can wait for pressurized CO2......For now it is the Excel to do the job.

What could cause my cabomba to turn yellow?


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