# trouble on the farm - help!



## Cavan Allen

So, it seems that I just can't fix a problem that's been going on in my 40 breeder farm tank. I did have a bad green dust problem and still have BBA, leaf down curling and stunting issues. I've been doing big water changes every 2-3 days along with massive substrate cleaning, as it was pretty dirty in there. Before adding my LED fixture, I had some of the same problems.

Here are the specs:

Rapid LED fixture with 24 LEDs, 4 royal blue, the rest a mix of cool and neutral white. I usually have it turned down to about 85%. PAR values are roughly what you'd have under new T5HO bulbs.

Nitrate: I have a gram scale and have been adding .3 grams per day (1.22ppm), which leaves me around 15ppm when I test. I have an AP kit, but it has come out pretty much the same as a Lamotte someone in my club has. If I add the recommended amount for EI daily, I'd have WAY high nitrate (.79g).

Phosphate: Add .12 per day of potassium phosphate (.55ppm).

Magnesium sulfate: .5grams per day. I've had some plants grow leaves that curl downward in a strange way and this was suggested as a possible remedy. Does not appear to be working.

K: After some pinholes on _Saururus chinensis_ and _Limnophila rugosa_ (+ ratty lower leaves on inclinata), I started adding some KCL, though I will probably just get some potassium sulfate. Adding .9g a day now(3ppm), though I suspect that may be too much, as it's out of whack for the other macros as far as amount goes and some additional stunting has happened recently. Perhaps something else is blocking K uptake (the magnesium sulfate?).

Co2 is through an ADA diffuser under a Hydor. My drop checker seems to have disappeared. New one on the way. It's turned up fairly high, but the shrimp seem to be OK.

Flourish Excel and Flourish: 10ml daily. Flourish Iron: 5ish ml daily.

KH is 5, GH is 10, but only because I've been experimenting with magnesium phosphate to solve a mysterious leaf down curving problem.

Rene Filstar canister filter, Hydor and an old in-tank UV filter that really only moves water. Spray bar vertically along back, the other two along the front. Lots of water movement. Canister cleaned about once a month. Airstone for about 5 hours at night, which actually helped quite a bit.

Fish load: 3 cherry barbs, 4 glowlight tetras. That's it. I've got quite a few Amano shrimp and natural color cherry shrimp. A few nerites and what has become way too many trumpet snails (culling).

Plants affected:
Stunting: _Hemianthus glomeratus_, _Ludwigia inclinata_, _Ludwigia simpsonii_ x _L. repens_, _Rotala macrandra_
K deficiency symptoms: _Saururus chinensis_, _Limophila rugosa_, _L. suffruticosa_
down curling leaves: _L. simpsoni_i x _L. repens_, _Acmella repe__ns_
General crappiness and failure to thrive: _Hydrocotyle tripartita_. 
Bigger problem is older leaves just gradually accumulating the little black nubs of BBA and being ruined. If anything, it grows faster now than ever.

On the other hand, my_ Hygrophila_ sp. 'brown' (probably polysperma variant), is pretty amazing looking. _Limnophila aromatica_ from the Asian market looks fantastic, while the rugosa beside it struggles. The inclinata and a lot of other plants actually look pretty good much of the time, but there's just _something_ a bit off. What? I have no idea at this point. Growing plants was never this hard in Pittsburgh. Maybe as my collecting and ID skills have improved my growing skills have declined?  I've got some pretty valuable plants I don't want to lose, and since it's collecting season, I don't feel like going through all the trouble of obtaining these great new plants before Amanda can get a hold of them herself just so I can bring them back to get covered with little black nubs and stunt. I want to enjoy the growing part of my hobby...

Thanks in advance.


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## Yo-han

Cavan Allen said:


> K: After some pinholes on Saururus chinensis and Limnophila rugosa (+ ratty lower leaves on inclinata), I started adding some KCL, though I will probably just get some potassium sulfate. Adding .9g a day now(3ppm), though I suspect that may be too much, as it's out of whack for the other macros as far as amount goes and some additional stunting has happened recently. Perhaps something else is blocking K uptake (the megnesium sulfate?).


I've dosed way more K and never fixed the problem with potassium. But after increasing PO4, no new pinholes appeared anymore. This worked for me and multiple clients in the lfs I work. Try it!

Perhaps this helps for the stunting as well. And the tripartita uses a lot as well. My tank easily uses 1.2 ppm PO4 a day, so I think you're on the low side. Try it for 2-3 weeks, I bet things will improve (you can thank me with some newly collected rare plants)


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## Cavan Allen

I will try it, though I must say I have been a bit wary of adding too much because of a last battle with BGA. It was pretty nasty. Maybe .16 or so per day. I may as well cut the MG as well. I'll report back. Thanks!


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## Seattle_Aquarist

Hi Cavan,

I may have missed it....what is your source of Ca? Are you maintaining your Ca:Mg ratio?

I have very soft water here in Seattle and if I don't dose sufficient Ca & Mg I experience similar deficiencies in my plants. Typically I dose sufficient Seachem Equilibrium to maintain a 4.0 dGH with extra MgSO4 and CaCl. I also add a little baking soda (NaHCO3) to maintain at least a 2.0 dKH. Some of my plants seem to really like the extra carbonate.



> *calcium:*
> Leaves to show effects first: New
> *Mild deficiency:* Smaller, distorted new leaf growth. Reduced leaf tissue, with the central vein persisting.
> Leaves often cupped, rather than flat
> *Moderate deficiency:* Often sudden bends or twisting of leaf, which is now much reduced in size.
> White streaks or white edges in new growth. Roots are stubby and twisted. Root tips may die.
> Leaves of Vallisneria are strongly crinkled as though they have tried to grow and got jammed in a small space.
> *Severe deficiency:* New growth almost entirely white. Leaves are tiny deformed stumps. Growing points for both shoot and root die.
> Damage and die off growing points.
> Yellowish leaf edges.


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## Cavan Allen

Hi Roy,

I'm not really sure what the ratio is. I'd certainly like to eliminate the ratio as a problem or fix it if it is one, but I don't have the right test kit I suppose. My water here is not so soft, but if I can check that out I will.


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## Seattle_Aquarist

Hi Cavan,

I have seen various numbers for the Ca:Mg ratio ranging from 4:1 to 3:1. Seachem Equlibrium uses about 3.3:1.

I find that if I add equal volumes of CaCl and MgSO4 (i.e. 1/2 tsp each) I can maintain the proper ratio. Of course CaCl creates an exothermic reaction so I typically dissolve it in water prior to adding it to my tanks.

It is amazing to me how quickly some plants will start to respond with new healthy growth after I correct whatever they are trying to tell me they are missing!


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## Cavan Allen

Yes, but the problem in my case is that, unlike you, I'm not basically starting from scratch when it comes to the GH. I need some means of finding out exactly what the ratio I have from the tap is.


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## Seattle_Aquarist

Hi Cavan,

Is the water hard where you live?


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## Cavan Allen

Not particularly. KH is usually around 4 put of the tap. I'll have to check the GH.


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## Zapins

Pics of leaf curling?

I had a similar problem a while ago which I think might have been a boron deficiency.

Down-curling leaves seems to be a sign of boron issues especially in rotalas from what I've seen & can gather.


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## Seattle_Aquarist

Hi Cavan,

It's amazing what you can find online; for example the water analysis for your utility in Silver Springs, MD.

If I am reading it correctly it looks like the average annual dGH in your area is about 5.8 dGH with about 15 ppm of Ca and 4.8 ppm of Mg. Assuming the substrate and hardscapes are basically inert I would say your tap water should be fine. Tom Barr has these comments on Ca and Mg levels in post #8 of this thread.

Assuming the fertilizer levels are good the most likely culprit may be the CO2 level.


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## Cavan Allen

Zapins said:


> Pics of leaf curling?
> 
> I had a similar problem a while ago which I think might have been a boron deficiency.
> 
> Down-curling leaves seems to be a sign of boron issues especially in rotalas from what I've seen & can gather.


It's not that really. Not along the edges. It's more that the tip is pushed down as if you had your finger on it.


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## Cavan Allen

Seattle_Aquarist said:


> Hi Cavan,
> 
> It's amazing what you can find online; for example the water analysis for your utility in Silver Springs, MD.
> 
> If I am reading it correctly it looks like the average annual dGH in your area is about 5.8 dGH with about 15 ppm of Ca and 4.8 ppm of Mg. Assuming the substrate and hardscapes are basically inert I would say your tap water should be fine. Tom Barr has these comments on Ca and Mg levels in post #8 of this thread.
> 
> Assuming the fertilizer levels are good the most likely culprit may be the CO2 level.


Thanks. Well, I think I'm going to increase P and cut out the MG additions and see how that goes.


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## bigstick120

Hmmm...

Why are you adding some much flourish and iron a day?

I used to dose about 5 ml flourish/iron in my 58 a day, then one day I realized I hadnt filled my autodoser in about a month, turns out when I changed the clock I never hit the set button so I hadnt dosed any flourish in probably 1.5 2 months. Plants looked great.

Reset it to its former 5 ml a day and got some algae that I hadnt seen in awhile.
Lower it and the algae is gone.

Id start there.


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## Cavan Allen

bigstick120 said:


> Hmmm...
> 
> Why are you adding some much flourish and iron a day?
> 
> I used to dose about 5 ml flourish/iron in my 58 a day, then one day I realized I hadnt filled my autodoser in about a month, turns out when I changed the clock I never hit the set button so I hadnt dosed any flourish in probably 1.5 2 months. Plants looked great.
> 
> Reset it to its former 5 ml a day and got some algae that I hadnt seen in awhile.
> Lower it and the algae is gone.
> 
> Id start there.


What algae? I think I'd put that lower down on the list of possibilities; I've actually added proportionally more in other tanks and not run into this. If nothing else works and I get desperate, I'll try that.

Interestingly, I got one of those little white plastic drop checkers in the mail and installed it. Dark green. My ADA checker, wherever it is, usually read higher. I'll bump it up a bit and see if that does anything, though I know that's unlikely to have any direct effect.


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## UltraBlue

Sorry to bump in, but in reading through the thread I noticed a lot of focus on nutrients, ratios, levels of this and that, etc., but not a mention of CO2. Some plants are doing better than others, which to me sounds like CO2 competition. 

The lighting change may have exacerbated what was already going on to a small extent making it more apparent. LEDs seem to be more "potent" IME, although I've never seen it proven..so its just anecdotal.

Any surface skimming? The airstone may be degassing more CO2 over night than previously...did you compensate for that?

Instead of airstones I have opted for some surface skimming with the same benefit.


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## Cavan Allen

OK to bump in. 

I've actually looked into getting a surface skimmer, as I do seem to get quite a bit of surface scum. The airstone ameliorates that to some degree, though not quite enough; I'm reliant on the frequent water changes to keep ahead of it. If I can get something that skims and serves as an inlet strainer that can reach down into the tank enough, I'll consider it. What are you using? 

In any case, I did bump it up slightly and will be keeping an eye on the fauna.


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## herns

Cavan Allen said:


> I did have a bad green dust problem and still have BBA, leaf down curling and stunting issues.


I had experienced with green dust in my tank from the past a few times and it was with too much period of lighting. The same thing with brown algae on the glass.


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## Cavan Allen

herns said:


> I had experienced with green dust in my tank from the past a few times and it was with too much period of lighting. The same thing with brown algae on the glass.


A while back I cut the lighting period to a half hour ramp up and down with 7 hours in between. That itself did help.


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## UltraBlue

Cavan Allen said:


> OK to bump in.
> 
> I've actually looked into getting a surface skimmer, as I do seem to get quite a bit of surface scum. The airstone ameliorates that to some degree, though not quite enough; I'm reliant on the frequent water changes to keep ahead of it. If I can get something that skims and serves as an inlet strainer that can reach down into the tank enough, I'll consider it. What are you using?
> 
> In any case, I did bump it up slightly and will be keeping an eye on the fauna.


I had the same experience you did with the surface film. An airstone really helped, but not quite all the way. I sprung for the ADA vuppa 1, it did the job...but I wouldn't recommend it. It is a pretty piece of hardware, but needs a lot of baby sitting since it doesn't auto adjust to the water level. I switched to the new eheim skim 350 and that is great. I think there is some real benefit to surface skimming in planted tanks. After adding it I was able to increase my CO2 and relieve the problems I had with CO2. It was perplexing for a while because fish would tell me too much CO2, but plants would say not enough. By adding the surface skimming I could add more without stressing the fish.

I've also found drop checkers give false high readings when combined with ceramic diffusers or atomizers. The bubbles enter the chamber causing it to react quicker and trap more CO2. My drop checker was more reliable when I switched things over to a cerges reactor. There is still lag time of about an hour, but if I'm hitting the lighter green when lights are on (or at full power with my dimmable ATI) its been good to go because it was in a good range before that. When I used an inline atomizer I would have to be hitting neon yellow and still wasn't sure.


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## jeff5614

UltraBlue said:


> I had the same experience you did with the surface film. An airstone really helped, but not quite all the way. I sprung for the ADA vuppa 1, it did the job...but I wouldn't recommend it. It is a pretty piece of hardware, but needs a lot of baby sitting since it doesn't auto adjust to the water level. I switched to the new eheim skim 350 and that is great. I think there is some real benefit to surface skimming in planted tanks. After adding it I was able to increase my CO2 and relieve the problems I had with CO2. It was perplexing for a while because fish would tell me too much CO2, but plants would say not enough. By adding the surface skimming I could add more without stressing the fish.
> 
> I've also found drop checkers give false high readings when combined with ceramic diffusers or atomizers. The bubbles enter the chamber causing it to react quicker and trap more CO2. My drop checker was more reliable when I switched things over to a cerges reactor. There is still lag time of about an hour, but if I'm hitting the lighter green when lights are on (or at full power with my dimmable ATI) its been good to go because it was in a good range before that. When I used an inline atomizer I would have to be hitting neon yellow and still wasn't sure.


Here's an interesting thread on the surface scum topic that may or may not be helpful.
http://www.barrreport.com/showthrea...than-others-and-why-some-folks-gas-their-fish


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## UltraBlue

jeff5614 said:


> Here's an interesting thread on the surface scum topic that may or may not be helpful.
> http://www.barrreport.com/showthrea...than-others-and-why-some-folks-gas-their-fish


I saw that thread and was exactly my experience with the surface scum. Pushed me to spring for the Vuppa1...then Eheim came out with something better and cheaper.


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## niko

Wow. J= -D *...

Here's another good link (but not to be trusted for lack of formulas):
 Is surface gas exchange a good thing?

 That's better, click here (a formula).

Back to the original question - Cavan, jack up the CO2. That's an obvious thing to try. All the other tinkering with this or that is a game you will have to play in the privacy of your own home/tank. I have a problem somewhat similar to yours as we speak - a tank full of pearling (!) plants that don't really grow. How's that for "what's my deficiency"? Common sense don't cut it. Maybe I should consider the opposite - EI for example. But even the opposite of common sense does not work - the tank receives dry ferts on a regular basis. Unfortunatelly I do not even have surface scum to blame.

And before you shell out the precious $18 for a surface skimmer off ebay consider making one tonight:
 Ultra Super Panda Imperial MSG Vuppa.
 Or just make someone rich.


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## UltraBlue

"Common sense don't cut it. Maybe I should consider the opposite - EI for example."

:icon_oak: always the passive aggressive comments about EI without the scientific evidence to support it. 

I suppose one could play the "whats my deficiency game" or one could provide non limiting nutrients and rule that out.

I'll take the advice of a phD in aquatic systems and aquatic macrophytes over random internet stuff any day.


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## niko

Listen, this thread is about providing everything and still things don't work. How do you and your scientist friends explain that? With more formulas? If EI was so straightforward as many people believe we will have deleted the "Algae" subforum a long time ago. Not to mention that most people that use EI don't even understand it. There is nothing to understand really - you need to adjust the ferts to the plants' needs. What an amazing invention indeed. But most people talk about maintaining certain concentrations and to them that is EI.

And by the way in some cultures you do not push your education in other people's faces nor take a great pleasure in feeling famous about it. Make what you want from that last sentence.


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## Cavan Allen

Keep it civil please.


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## UltraBlue

niko said:


> Listen, this thread is about providing everything and still things don't work. How do you and your scientist friends explain that? With more formulas? If EI was so straightforward as many people believe we will have deleted the "Algae" subforum a long time ago. Not to mention that most people that use EI don't even understand it. There is nothing to understand really - you need to adjust the ferts to the plants' needs. What an amazing invention indeed. But most people talk about maintaining certain concentrations and to them that is EI.
> 
> And by the way in some cultures you do not push your education in other people's faces nor take a great pleasure in feeling famous about it. Make what you want from that last sentence.


I simply explain it by the fact that incorrect assumptions are being made about everything being provided. The plants will tell you that if they are not growing healthy. I will agree that many do not understand the principles of many things in this hobby, including EI. There are no formulas to it, however. The simple idea is to prevent hobbyists from having to measure nutrients by providing them in amounts that are non limiting. Liebig's Law is the guiding principle of EI. EI has nothing to do with eliminating algae, it has to do with eliminating one of the many possible confounds in sorting it out. Nutrients and light levels are the easiest for the hobbyist to control. As this thread has shown even experienced planted tank keepers have troubles sorting out problems and their causes. Dosing EI rules out nutrients allowing the hobbyist to focus elsewhere like flow/filtration, CO2, or light. It is not an invention, nor is it Dr. Barr's original idea (which he does not claim either). He simply advocates for it as one of many methods for hobbyists to be successful. I use it and have been successful with it, so I also advocate for it. No one believes it to be the end all to everything and we must be understanding of those who as beginners believe it to be the cure for all their woes.

Your sarcasm and passive aggressive links do nothing to gain you credibility and make any forum or thread you participate in hostile. Frankly it has kept me as a lurker here on APC. I think you make excellent comments about flow and filtration, some of which I have applied to my own systems. However, the added "stuff" in many of your posts is distasteful and many times disrespectful to other members of the forum community and of our beloved hobby.

No one threw education in anyone's face. I apologize, if the fact someone may know a great deal about a subject evidenced by an advanced degree which then results in others finding that persons advice of greater weight than your own, is offensive. Sounds like a personal problem, not a cultural one. Mocking and attacking science only shows an inability to legitimately disprove it.

Cavan, I apologize for my role in derailing the topic. I did my best to not even mention EI because I knew it was only a matter of time before Niko sprung in and I wanted to avoid any contention. I have difficult time not responding to such comments. I will say no more in this thread. Best of luck sorting out your farm tank.


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## Cavan Allen

Increased co2, increased po4, increased K, no more magnesium additions. Inclinata recovered and exploded, some diatoms showed up. Installed skimmer, and drop checker solid blue upon return home today. No more scum, but it looks like I'll have to turn the co2 way up to compensate.


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## Phil Edwards

Got any updates? How's the tank looking?


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## Cavan Allen

Growth is much better for some plants. The inclinata absolutely exploded, and the macrandra has recovered. I found some tripartita, and it looks to be doing better too. Really, the only plant that's funny now is _Bacopa innominata_, which I just got last week. Leaves are somewhat cupped. Other people in my club grow this by the pound, but it just won't do well for me. I've got some major green spot algae, and still have BBA. So while newer growth looks great on most, older leaves are scrungy with a mix of those two. Curiously, my _Isoetes flacida_ (a BEAUTIFUL plant) is practically ruined by it, while another _Isoetes_ has none at all! Also tiny amounts of cladophora, but only a bit. I think those really frequent water changes were helping me keep ahead of it better. Last tests I did gave me 1.2ppm P and about 15ppm N. Nothing crazy there.

The other day, I got the parts I needed to fix my old Eheim 2026. There's a coarse sponge, and the rest is only lava rock. My skimmer attachment is now hooked up to it (Eheim handles it with ease - XP2 was getting airlocked), but I've kept the XP2 going as well. On either end of the tank along the center line is an inlet, and a vertical spray bar pushes water along both the front and rear glass. I've still got my Hydor in there near the surface, along with a tiny 83gph powerhead. LOTS of circulation now, and it's in a good circular pattern. I think this will help.


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## Cavan Allen

Noticed some macrandra and sphaerocarpa with leaves that look rolled up along the sides near the base, though they may be recovering. What do you make of that?


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## bigstick120

What is your KH and GH?


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## Cavan Allen

10gh, 5 kh


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## Cavan Allen

Is everyone as perplexed as me? Upped the co2 again. More macrandra stunting.


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## Zapins

I'd love to see some pics of the affected plants.


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## bigstick120

if your GH is that high, Im going to say you are short on Mg or Ca. Are you adding either of those?


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## Cavan Allen

bigstick120 said:


> if your GH is that high, Im going to say you are short on Mg or Ca. Are you adding either of those?


Added 2g of magnesium today. No affect yet at least. Actually, the macrandra has gone total stunt. Other than more co2 and flow (with the Eheim on there too), the only difference is that I have been doing less frequent water changes. That alone seems to have made it worse.

If my water report is to be believed, I have what should be an ideal ratio of mg to ca. Unless for some strange reason I do not have the ratios I think, or you really can lose a lot of ca because of snail shell growth. I suppose I could just reconstitute RO water and see what happens. Nothing else is working, and there's something fundamentally wrong that's causing problems and giving algae a foothold.


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## Cavan Allen

Zapins said:


> I'd love to see some pics of the affected plants.


I'll try tomorrow. May have to pull some stems out to get decent pics.


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## Cavan Allen

Dumb question: Exactly how far away from the comparison card am I supposed to hold the vial in the AP nitrate kit? Pressed against it, it looks like 7.5-10. A slight distance away and it looks like there's much less, maybe 5, if that. P is about 1. Wonder if the big co2 and flow increase has made what may have just been a nitrate shortage worse.


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## ObiQuiet

Cavan Allen said:


> Dumb question: Exactly how far away from the comparison card am I supposed to hold the vial in the AP nitrate kit?


I have the same question about all the tests.


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## Zapins

Me too. It has always been unclear where to hold them for me.


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## BruceF

Hold the vial right in front of the card. The correct color should be the one you cant see.


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## Cavan Allen

I contacted them and was told to hold it against the card. Hope that's right, because its a much different reading. Think I'll try totally reconstituting my water before I mess with fertilizing again.


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## Zapins

Here are my thoughts on the issue Cavan.

From your descriptions the issue is showing up in old leaves and not new ones, so the nutrient deficiency must be of a mobile or variably mobile nutrient. This rules out Calcium, Iron, Boron and Manganese (not mobile).

*edit*
http://5e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=t&id=289

*Immobile nutrients are*: Ca, Fe, B, and Mn

*Mobile nutrients are*: N, P, K, and Mg. We can rule out NPK since they don't cause leaf curling. This leaves Mg deficiency as a possibility.

*Variably mobile nutrients*: Cu, Zn, S, and Mo. 
I doubt its a copper deficiency since plants only need something like 1 ug / kg of soil to be ok and your copper pipes should provide this. Furthermore, Cu, Zn, and Mo are almost completely immobile within a plant as well, so deficiencies would show up on new leaves, not the old.

Interestingly Mo deficiencies do follow what you describe (cupping/curling of leaves, followed by chlorosis and necrosis death of growing tip) but this *should* occur in new leaves unless Rotala macrandra is particularly good at mobilizing Mo. A better description of Mo deficiency here if you are interested: http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...olve-identify-plants-issues-2.html#post659997

Sulfur is unlikely since S deficiency tends to show up as a general yellowing of the entire plant (since it is variably mobile old leaves go yellow as S is removed, and new leaves are also yellow since they don't have enough S to line the chloroplast walls).

So, after ruling out possible deficiencies we are left with Mg or Mo deficiency.

It might also be a toxicity of some kind but I am less familiar with those. I don't think it is sodium toxicity since that interferes with the Ca/Mg/K uptake and since Ca isn't mobile you'd see new leaf stunting as the primary symptom.

How certain are you that your Ca/Mg dosing is correct? Have you got a Ca test? If you use Ca and a GH test you can subtract and figure out what the Mg content is.


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## Zapins

An interesting little blurb about aluminum toxicity and how it affects Mg/Ca uptake. Not that I am saying you have an aluminium toxicity, but it is interesting info, and food for thought.

"Many of the biochemical effects of aluminium on plants are probably associated with alteration of the root-membrane structure due to the binding of aluminium to the membrane (Foy, 1984). Aluminium toxicity results in reduced root growth and the remaining roots are stubby and brittle. There is little branching and these remaining roots do not absorb nutrients or water efficiently. Aluminium toxicity may also induce phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and molybdenum deficiencies (Foy, 1984)."

Draycott, A. Philip; Christenson, Donald R.; Draycott, A. P.. Nutrients for Sugar Beet Production : Soil-Plant Relationships.
Wallingford, Oxon, GBR: CABI Publishing, 2003. p 75.
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/drexel/Doc?id=10173521&ppg=91
Copyright © 2003. CABI Publishing. All rights reserved.

And from another paper, they say aluminium is the most abundant metal in the earth's crust (7%). Aluminium toxicity primarily occurs in acidic conditions which produce Al+3 which apparently interferes with Ca/Mg uptake. Furthermore, the problem can be fixed by adding more Mg.

Aluminum Toxicity and Tolerance in Plants
Plant Physiol. (1 995) 107: 31 5-321 
Emmanuel Delhaize* and Peter R. Ryan

Another source says:
"As a rule of thumb, soil aluminium concentration between 2 and 5 ppm (mg/kg) is toxic to the roots of sensitive plant species, and above 5 ppm is toxic to tolerant species."

Makes me wonder about the possible effects we see in high tech planted tanks what the effect really is of gunning our CO2 and dropping the pH so much. Maybe that is why we have to artificially keep Ca/Mg levels so high - to counteract other effects like Aluminium toxicity? Its really too bad we don't have easy access to decent water tests.


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## Cavan Allen

It is definitely new leaves. More later.


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## Cavan Allen

Thinking about this and talking to some people at my club today, I think that I may just be overdoing it with the potassium. That might explain why the stunting appeared following fewer water changes. Before going to all reconstituted water or anything like that, I think I'll just try cutting the K first. 

I've noticed that since increasing co2 again and adding the Eheim, the green spot has backed off. Still hoping I can defeat the BBA before it destroys my Isoetes.


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## Zapins

Cavan, pictures!!!!!!! Rawrrr!


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## Cavan Allen

Doing the best I can... Been busy.










That's arcuata. Shaded, but shade doesn't do that.


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## Zapins

Hmm.

The picture shows an issue with Ca/Mg balance. The twisting and yellowing of new growth are classic calcium deficiency symptoms. Now whether the Ca deficiency is due to not enough Ca or a toxicity from Mg/K/Na/Al is difficult to say without further tests//experiments.

These are the possibility still on the table after seeing the pics:
1) Too little Ca, 
2) too much Mg, 
3) perhaps too much K as well, but from what I have heard and experienced you have to really dose crazy amount of K to interfere with Ca/Mg. There doesn't seem to be a well defined upper limit for K or even a correct ratio like there is for Ca/Mg. So, it might be potassium overdose. 
4) Might also be a sodium toxicity, since Na interferes with Ca/Mg uptake. Old leaves do tend to go a blackish color with salt addition. 
5) Aluminum toxicity is also still on the table however remote, it also blocks the correct functioning of Ca/Mg uptake and gives calcium deficiency signs.

You'll have to work your way through this list and eliminate each problem one at a time. I'd leave the Aluminum theory for last since I have no idea how you'd test that one out. 

One way to solve the issue would be to reconstitute RO water with a Ca:Mg ratio of between 7:1 and 4:1 and not add supplemental K above and beyond that which is added with your other fertilizers (KNO3, etc...). Another possible method is to increase the Ca concentration to correct the ratio issue. Deficiencies/toxicities tend to depend more on the ratio of elements not the concentrations.

All in all your plants don't look too damaged, so their recovery time once given the right conditions shouldn't be more than a week to start noticing new health growth and then 2 weeks for a proper recovery.


----------



## Cavan Allen

Tested tap water, and GH is 10. KH 5. Not great, but not horrible. But should be more than enough calcium. Or not. Suppose I could experiment with calcium sulfate and tinker around with ratios if cutting back K doesn't work.


----------



## JeffyFunk

If you really want to know your metal concentrations, you could send me some samples and i'd be happy to run them for you. I work in a laboratory that does metal analysis (ICP-OES) so i can just put them in with the other samples. Metals include Ca, Fe, K, Mg. (I don't analyze B because you need a glass free setup and that's not me.) Just putting it out there...


----------



## Cavan Allen

I'll take you up on that. Sending PM.


----------



## Zapins

Wow this is great! Some proper results. Now we can really put the theories to the test.

Take a sample of your tap water as well as tank water so we can get an idea of the differences.

When the results come through can you upload them as an attachment in the original format?


----------



## Cavan Allen

I'll try, yes.

Looks like the innominata has totally stunted. New leaves are barely visible to the naked eye. That plant has NEVER grown properly for me, and it must be very sensitive to whatever is wrong.


----------



## AaronT

Nice offer Jeffy. I'm really interested to know the results as Cavan and I live nearby and have similar water and stunting problems. Extra Mg seems to help me most of the time, but not always.


----------



## Phil Edwards

Wow, it took me a while to find this thread again.  I'd be willing to make a bet that it's Ca related, probably with an interaction with K. I've had similar issues when dosing lots of K. Try cutting back totally on Ca and Mg; 1/4 dosing K, and reconstituting with a pre-made GH booster for a little bit to see how the new leaves end up. 

Have you called your water supplier to see if they've changed any buffers or whatnot recently?


----------



## Cavan Allen

Are you saying I should start from scratch with my water? I already have containers of Equilibrium and Seachem's KH builder. Old, but still good. I can worry about the algae issues later, though they'll probably get better along with improved plant growth if this works, since whatever is wrong seems to be holding everything back.


----------



## BruceF

I always thought that it was Mg you had to worry about not the K or the CA.

"Calcium and potassium compete with magnesium for uptake by plant roots, and magnesium often loses."
http://www.garden.org/subchannels/flowers/roses?q=show&id=68


----------



## Zapins

Bruce that seems to be more to do with terrestrial plants and soil binding properties and solubility. In aquatic settings its a bit different because there is no reservoir. Even in terrestrial plants its still a 4:1 to 7:1 ratio they need and too much Mg can also block Ca uptake, same as too much Ca or too much K.


----------



## Phil Edwards

Cavan,

If you feel up to doing a 100% WC, go for it. Otherwise I'd say just start doing your usual WC routine with reconstituted RO. Old, but still good, works. LOL, that's starting to sound like me.


----------



## Cavan Allen

Phil Edwards said:


> Cavan,
> 
> If you feel up to doing a 100% WC, go for it. Otherwise I'd say just start doing your usual WC routine with reconstituted RO. Old, but still good, works. LOL, that's starting to sound like me.


Easy with that old talk Phil. I'm in the best shape of my life!

Anyway, I did a 50% change two days ago and am doing another now. _R. macrandra_ is unstunted. Same for at least some of the arcuata. My tap water must really be awful. Jury is still out on the immoninata, but we'll see. I'm not of the woods yet, but things are looking better (and apparently growing faster...). Thanks for everyone's help so far.


----------



## Zapins

Did you end up sending samples to be tested?


----------



## Cavan Allen

Zapins said:


> Did you end up sending samples to be tested?


Didn't send yet, but I do have them and will try to tomorrow.


----------



## Zapins

Excellent! Can't wait.


----------



## Cavan Allen

I wonder if any of my problems were exacerbated by the particular form of K I was using (KCL). Chloride is bad in large amounts? Anyway, there may be enough K now in the Equilibrium and ferts. I did see a rugosa leaf with pinholes, but I'm not sure if that's leftover. If not, I'm thinking I'll use potassium sulfate. 

May have to reduce P. I didn't have green spot like this before. Still BBA! Be patient, I know. But man, that Isoetes is a magnet for it! On the plus side, no visible hair or spirogyra of any kind. 

I did send off the samples.


----------



## JeffyFunk

Tap Water Analysis (ICP-OES)

Ca = 48.4 ppm
Mg = 10.8 ppm
Fe = <0.01 ppm
K = 3.3 ppm

Calculated Hardness = 2.497[Ca] + 4.118[Mg] = 165 mg CaCO3/L

Aquarium Water Analysis (ICP-OES)

Ca = 48.4 ppm
Mg = 12.0 ppm
Fe = 0.04 ppm
K = 40.7 ppm

Please note - No QA/QC solutions were run on these samples and these analysis results are for personal use only. These results may not be used for regulatory reporting purposes or compliance testing. If anyone else would like their water tested, please feel free to contact me. Thank you.


----------



## Zapins

Jeffy thanks for the results.

Did you get any other nutrient//element readouts? 

Looks like the ratios of those nutrients aren't the cause of the issue.


----------



## JeffyFunk

Zapins said:


> Jeffy thanks for the results.
> 
> Did you get any other nutrient//element readouts?
> 
> Looks like the ratios of those nutrients aren't the cause of the issue.


ICP-OES is for metal analysis only. I had it analyze other metals like Mo, Ni, Mn, Co, etc (no B, though - B is a PITA to analyze) but frankly all those metal results r so low that I highly doubt they r the problem. U also start to run into baseline / detection issues at those concentrations. (Impurities r easy to talk about eliminating but highly difficult in real life...). I did not offer any UV/Vis analysis of the other inorganic parameters as I just don't do those that often and frankly, there r test kits available for those nutrients. The hardness test kit is a disaster and so much easier to determine mathematically from the Ca and Mg values... And there aren't any easy methods for Fe or K analysis available to the average hobbiest (without access to a 85k ICP-OES).

To me, Fe looks low. The metal analysis also says u have medium hard water (I think). I know that in my tanks, CO2 is often times the issue as that prevents my plants from using all of the fertilizer I dose. I c that as a buildup of all the nutrients. For me, that just means I have to dose less and avoid really demanding plants.


----------



## AaronT

JeffyFunk said:


> Tap Water Analysis (ICP-OES)
> Ca = 48.4 ppm
> Mg = 10.8 ppm
> 
> Calculated Hardness = 2.497[Ca] + 4.118[Mg] = 165 mg CaCO3/L


For those of us ignorant of how all this works could you explain the results a little more? Like how does this look in German degrees?

I don't follow the calculation for hardness. It would seem the GH is only about 3.3 german degrees. 
Is that a KH of 9? (165 / 17.9) = 9.2

Do I have these backwards?

I know the KH / GH kits aren't super accurate, but we've always tested the KH at 3-4 with the API kits.


----------



## Zapins

Would you mind posting the full results? I'm really keen on looking over all the micros etc... that were analyzed. Its a rare opportunity that usually never presents itself. You can email me the report if you don't want to type it out. My email is my user name @gmail.com.

The issue is not with the Ca:Mg:K ratio from the results you have posted, which means that something else is causing the issue, probably one of the micros. 

Did you happen to test aluminum levels? Sodium/Cl levels?


----------



## Cavan Allen

Thanks Jeff! Looks like the water report Roy dug up was indeed accurate. In any case, no more KCL. 

5mls of Flourish Iron a day not enough? Got a bunch of ADA Iron Bottom and their multi sticks laying around. Even the tool to apply them. I'm leery of going too heavy in the water column as I've got that green spot still, and...BBA. Less on the plants but seems to like the gravel. 

Macrandra recovered. Still perhaps some issues with the innominata. As this is a test tank, I want to be able to grow pretty much anything. Oddly, viscidula grows extremely slowly. Even grew it in the past and it did fine! May experiment with Flourish Nitrogen to see if that helps (Aaron says it may).


----------



## JeffyFunk

Zapins said:


> Would you mind posting the full results? I'm really keen on looking over all the micros etc... that were analyzed. Its a rare opportunity that usually never presents itself. You can email me the report if you don't want to type it out. My email is my user name @gmail.com.
> 
> The issue is not with the Ca:Mg:K ratio from the results you have posted, which means that something else is causing the issue, probably one of the micros.
> 
> Did you happen to test aluminum levels? Sodium/Cl levels?


I'm @ home right now so i'll have to get the results when i get into work tomorrow. I did analyze Al if i remember correctly. I did not analyze Na or Cl (Cl is not typically analyzed by ICP-OES since it's an anion - all metal species are cations. If i worked in a larger commercial lab, I'd have put the samples through an IC, but alas, we do not have one...).

My only issue w/ micro element results is two fold. First of all, the values obtained that low are just not values i'm comfortable reporting since I'm always weary of metal impurities. Second of all, I don't think we really have anything to compare them to. What concentration values constitutes a deficiency? I don't really know... It'd love to compile information on that from actual people's aquariums, though...

Also, there was an interesting post on TPT lately. In it, the person stated that the use of Seachem's PhosGuard (i.e. phosphate & silicate remover) helped them deal with BBA.

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=423737

Now we all know that Phosphates are essential for plant growth so on the surface this seems contradictory. Tom Barr stated that the addition of the phosphate remover helped w/ the BBA because it changed the limiting element from CO2 to Phosphate. Plants, supposedly, are better able to deal w/ limiting CO2 than Algae (BBA in this instance) so the removal of the excess phosphate (in addition to limiting CO2) helped to combat the BBA. My take on this thread is this: CO2 is usually the problem and the most difficult thing to provide. Unless we test our aquariums to determine their actual nutrient uptake, the addition of excess nutrients w/ limited CO2 is pointless and will only result in algae. (I have this personal problem myself, to be honest... blah)


----------



## Cavan Allen

Looks like the macrandra is stunting again. And I just CAN'T add MORE co2! Seems that something is building up and if I don't keep doing big changes to get rid of it, things stunt. On the other hand, much is growing much faster now. Go figure. Just about ready to take it all down and just keep emersed stuff.


----------



## AaronT

Reading around a bit it would seem the 165 mg / L CaCO3 is the total hardness or GH. 

A GH of 9.2 isn't unreasonable for plants growth.

Did you measure the total alkalinity as well?


----------



## JeffyFunk

AaronT said:


> For those of us ignorant of how all this works could you explain the results a little more? Like how does this look in German degrees?
> 
> I don't follow the calculation for hardness. It would seem the GH is only about 3.3 german degrees.
> Is that a KH of 9? (165 / 17.9) = 9.2
> 
> Do I have these backwards?
> 
> I know the KH / GH kits aren't super accurate, but we've always tested the KH at 3-4 with the API kits.


Because I work in an Environmental laboratory, the standard method for most analysis is defined in the textbook 'Standard Methods for the Examination of Water & Wastewater". This compilation of methods and scientific knowledge is the standard for routine chemical analysis. All the methods in this book are listed in the standard units of "mg eqivalent CaCO3/L" ... there is no german degrees of hardness, etc. - the units of measure that we, aquarists, are used to seeing.

That said, I believe that "General Hardness" or "Total Hardness" is most basically defined as the sum of the calcium and magnesium concentrations in solution as I stated before (taken from the Standard Methods Manual):

Hardness, mg eq. CaCO3/L = 2.497[Ca] + 4.118[Mg]

The calculation method is the more accurate method to determine general hardness. (The other method is an EDTA titration method.) To convert "general hardness" into units of "degree German Hardness" where 1 dH = 10 ppm CaO = 17.848 ppm CaCO3, divide the general hardness by 17.848. For Cavan's tap water, as Aaron calculated, 165/17.9 = 9.2 dH. In terms of soft/hard vocabulary, this water would be described as "Hard" since the defined range of "hard water" is 121-180 ppm eq. CaCO3.

Carbonate hardness, on the other hand, is determined by the amount of acid required to titrate the solution to a pH 4.5 (bromocresol green indicator). The acid titrant, 0.1N HCl / 0.2N H2SO4 or 0.01N HCl / 0.02N H2SO4, will react with the carbonates and bicarbonates in solution to give you a titration curve. Since I hate titrations, i did not do this analysis. Also, there are test kits available for purchase so that people can do their own titrations if they so desire.


----------



## JeffyFunk

Zapins said:


> Would you mind posting the full results? I'm really keen on looking over all the micros etc... that were analyzed. Its a rare opportunity that usually never presents itself.
> 
> Did you happen to test aluminum levels? Sodium/Cl levels?


Here are the other metals I analyzed:

Cavan's Tap Water (ICP-OES)

Al = 0.03 ppm
Co = <0.01 ppm
Cr = <0.01 ppm
Cu = 0.04 ppm
Mn = <0.01 ppm
Ni = <0.01 ppm
V = <0.01 ppm
Zn = 0.12 ppm

Cavan's Aquarium Water (ICP-OES)

Al = <0.01 ppm
Co = <0.01 ppm
Cr = <0.01 ppm
Cu = <0.01 ppm
Mn = <0.01 ppm
Ni = <0.01 ppm
V = <0.01 ppm
Zn = 0.41 ppm

Please note - No QA/QC solutions were run on these samples and these analysis results are for personal use only. These results may not be used for regulatory reporting purposes or compliance testing. If anyone else would like their water tested, please feel free to contact me. Thank you.


----------



## AaronT

JeffyFunk said:


> Carbonate hardness, on the other hand, is determined by the amount of acid required to titrate the solution to a pH 4.5 (bromocresol green indicator). The acid titrant, 0.1N HCl / 0.2N H2SO4 or 0.01N HCl / 0.02N H2SO4, will react with the carbonates and bicarbonates in solution to give you a titration curve. Since I hate titrations, i did not do this analysis. Also, there are test kits available for purchase so that people can do their own titrations if they so desire.


Thanks for the explanation on the total hardness.

So basically you're saying the API test kits that one can purchase to test KH are fairly accurate? It would seem they aren't far off as I believe Cavan used an API test kit to test his total hardness and got somewhere between 9-10 degrees.


----------



## JeffyFunk

AaronT said:


> Thanks for the explanation on the total hardness.
> 
> So basically you're saying the API test kits that one can purchase to test KH are fairly accurate? It would seem they aren't far off as I believe Cavan used an API test kit to test his total hardness and got somewhere between 9-10 degrees.


To be honest with you, i've never used any hobbiest test kits... lol. In the cases for the analysis i have done, it's been either w/ my ICP-OES at work (because i can...) or, in the case of nitrates or phosphates, through UV-VIS by researching the analytical methods and performing them on the Hach UV-VIS at work (also, because i can...).

Theoretically, i'm thinking that most people are able to perform a titration from a test kit because (1) the reagents are stable and (2) there is a clear end point from the pH indicators. This is a lot different than the test kits people usually complain about (nitrates, nitrites or phosphates) because those tests involve more unstable reagents and color chart comparisons.


----------



## Cavan Allen

Isn't that a quite large zinc increase? Everything else seems largely the same. I wonder if that accumulates from all the Flourish.


----------



## Zapins

Cavan, I think the results rule out Ca/Mg/K/Al issues pretty decisively.

As I said in a prior post I am not very familiar with toxicity issues. But the elevated zinc reading in your tank makes me wonder.

I did a bit of reading and digging around and found this:

----------------------------
From a hydroponics site:
"Optimum concentrations for tomatoes are: *Boron 0.44*, Copper 0.05, Chlorine 0.85, Manganese 0.62, Molybdenum 0.06, *Zinc 0.09*, Iron 2.5 ppm (mg/L)."

"Macro nutrients:
*N between 113-144 ppm*, *P of 62 ppm*, K of 199, Mg of 50, Ca 122-165"
​From:
http://ag.arizona.edu/hydroponictomatoes/nutritio.htm​
----------------------------

Then I had a look in the database and found two relevant articles one says:

"Zinc toxicity depends on pH, which controls the concentration of zinc in solution. High concentrations of zinc can cause toxicity in plants. The *general symptoms are stunting of shoot, curling and rolling of young leaves, death of leaf tips and chlorosis*. ~80 uM zinc caused Typha latifolio to show chlorosis.

Zinc toxicity is also known to inhibit root growth in terrestrial plants."​
From:
Effect of Metal Toxicity on Plant Growth and Metabolism: I. Zinc
Sustainable Agriculture
2009, pp 873-884
http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-90-481-2666-8_53.pdf
http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-90-481-2666-8_53.pdf#page-1​
----------------------------
In another article I found this

"*Soluble Zn* and the ratio of Zn2+ to organic Zn-ligand complexes increase at *low pH*, especially in soils of *low soluble organic matter *content.

Toxicity symptoms include reduced yields and *stunted growth**, Fe-deficiency-*induced chlorosis through reductions in chlorophyll synthesis and chloroplast degradation, and interference with P (and Mg and Mn) uptake (Carroll & Loneragan, 1968; Boawn & Rasmussen, 1971; Foy et al., 1978; Chaney, 1993). *Crops differ markedly in their susceptibility to Zn toxicity*. In acid soils, graminaceous species are generally less sensitive to Zn toxicity than most dicots, although this is reversed in alkaline soils (Chaney, 1993). Among dicots, leafy vegetable crops are sensitive to Zn toxicity, especially spinach and beet, because of their inherent high Zn uptake capacity (Boawn & Rasmussen, 1971; Chaney, 1993). There is also genetic variation in sensitivity to Zn toxicity within species, including soybean, and rice."​
From:
Zinc in plants Martin R. Broadley1, Philip J. White2, John P. Hammond3, Ivan Zelko4,5, Alexander Lux4,5 Article first published online: 7 FEB 2007 DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2007.01996.x
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezpr...doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2007.01996.x/abstract​----------------------------

The ratio of Boron to Zinc should be roughly 5:1 like calcium/magnesium.

Your tank Zinc levels are 5x higher than those used for fruiting tomatoes which clearly need a lot higher levels than our plants. Just look at the values they recommend for NO3 and PO4 as a comparison to what we normally use (113-144 ppm NO3 and 62 ppm of PO4).

I'm not calling it for certain but it is something to think about. Why are your zinc levels higher in your tank? Isn't it interesting that the symptoms match, and you said the plants seem to recover if you do frequent water changes? Water changes would flush out accumulated zinc resetting it to the 0.12 ppm mark and also increase the pH for a short amount of time. Also, as you gun your CO2 higher and higher over the week the acidity increases making more zinc soluble. I wonder if excess zinc isn't your issue?

I can't really say since I've only seen one photo of your plants but is it my eyes only or do the new leaf tips look a little chlorotic?










What are your thoughts?

I'll have a look around and see if I can find out what normal concentrations in aquatic environments are. Most of the data refers to soil concentrations which is markedly different from aquatic concentrations. I suspect hydroponics data will probably be more inline with what we want in our tanks.


----------



## JeffyFunk

JeffyFunk said:


> Cavan's Tap Water (ICP-OES)
> 
> Al = 0.03 ppm
> Zn = 0.12 ppm
> 
> Cavan's Aquarium Water (ICP-OES)
> 
> Al = <0.01 ppm
> Zn = 0.41 ppm
> 
> Please note - No QA/QC solutions were run on these samples and these analysis results are for personal use only. These results may not be used for regulatory reporting purposes or compliance testing. If anyone else would like their water tested, please feel free to contact me. Thank you.


I personally think the elevated [Zn] is nothing to worry about. First of all, Zn is in CSM+B so the chances of you removing it completely from your dosing schedule is pretty small. Second of all, Zn (along with Fe) is very difficult element to remove contaminations from. Working in a laboratory that does metal analysis for steel industry waste, Zn contaminations are everywhere!

In fact, out of concern the Zn value is getting over analyzed, i redid the tank water analysis and this time, i get a [Zn] = 0.25 ppm. (All the other trace element values are the same, btw.) Is this new value too high? I'm not sure to be honest with you...

(BTW - I find this whole conversation of 0.4 ppm Zn as "high" to be hilarious as i'd normally consider that a good result in the routine samples i analyze for work... lol. I don't work with drinking water samples that often... )

From reading one of the papers that Zapins linked to, it said that Zn toxicity issues can be seen as signs of Fe deficiency. I think the easiest thing to change in your fertilizing strategy is to add more Fe since your [Fe] were on the low side to begin with.

Maybe the addition of activated carbon would help as well? I've found that i have awful tap water and activated carbon helps a lot in my tanks, esp with regard to BBA. Maybe it will help with the "high Zn values"?


----------



## Zapins

Jeffy, when you look at zinc values in your work is that from contaminated soil//ground water? If it is then there are other factors at play. Clays in the soil, the higher pH levels of most soils and organics that bind Zinc can all reduce the amount of soluble zinc getting into plants. So the soil or groundwater readings you are used to seeing might not be directly comparable to our tanks which are essentially clay and organic free and have a pretty consistently low pH.

What I'd be keen on learning is what is the normal Zn concentration in our tap water? Does it routinely go above 0.4 ppm? If so then perhaps it isn't zinc related at all.

Another thing I noticed that is consistent with the zinc theory is that Cavan posted in this thread a few weeks back that adding a bubbler over night seemed to help out. I wonder if this is because it degassed the water somewhat and raised the pH, leaving less Zn dissolved which in turn gave the plants a bit of a break from the suspected zinc toxicity?



JeffyFunk said:


> From reading one of the papers that Zapins linked to, it said that Zn toxicity issues can be seen as signs of Fe deficiency. I think the easiest thing to change in your fertilizing strategy is to add more Fe since your [Fe] were on the low side to begin with.


This likely wouldn't work because the Zn toxicity prevents normal use of Iron, so if you add more iron and still have a zinc toxicity the iron still cannot be used and you'd still have iron deficiency-like symptoms.

----------------------------
I looked at a hydroponics site and the suggested range at which food plants do well varies from 0.02 to 0.2 ppm zinc. I had a look at their suggested ranges for NO3 and PO4 to put it all in perspective and they suggest NO3 should be from 70 to 200 ppm and PO4 from 30-90 ppm. So I suspect that their Zn recommendations are also higher than what we'd want for our aquatic systems.

From:
http://www.tps.com.au/hydroponics/nutrient.htm​
----------------------------

Here is a post from a few years ago from Kekon (I really miss that guy - he had some great insight into micros).



Kekon said:


> But boron... is very mysterious element for me. I was always told the range between toxicity and deficiency is very narrow. Most fertilizers usually contains B:Zn in a ratio of 2:1. I use RO water and added typically 0.008..0.02 pmm of B weekly. I saw negative results when boron dose was higher than 0.015 ppm weekly. However, my Macradra began to grow exceptionally well when such dose was added to the tank (0.015 ppm weekly). But other plants seemed to grow slower.
> 
> I don't know how much boron is removed by my RO filter. I was told that reverse osmosis membrane removes only 50% boron from the tap water. I estimated that in my tank the best result are obtained when I add 0.008..0.015 ppm of boron (weekly) and *0.006..0.02 ppm of zinc (weekly)*. Of course this work in my tank when only RO water is used.



From:
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...4828-boron-zinc-dosing-levels.html#post491680​
----------------------------

It seems like from Cavan's prior descriptions that the "toxicity" is right on the boarder of being a toxicity otherwise minute fluctuations like water changes and bubblers decreasing the soluble Zn levels wouldn't make much of a difference.

Also, I think if it does turn out to be a zinc issue then using RO water should correct the problem. We all use CSM+B and the other fertilizer products, but we might not all have 0.12 ppm zinc in our water as a baseline.

I'd really like to see more pictures of the plants.

Cavan have you been adding extra micros for some reason?


----------



## Zapins

You know, I wonder if what you are seeing Cavan is the same thing I was struggling with back in 2006. I had a lot of issues with plants not growing correctly, stunting, yellowing, there were a lot of similarities with your plants. I had my water analyzed at the time by the chem department and these are the results.



Zapins said:


> My tanks have the following concentration of elements in it in ppm...
> ::::::*Adm. tank#1*:: *Adm. tank #2*:::*Room tank *::: *Tap Adm. water*
> Ag :::::: 0.0 ::::::::: 0.0019 :::::: 0.0 :::::::::: 0.0064
> Al :::::: 0.0 ::::::::::::::: 0.0 :::::: 0.0 :::::::::::: 0.292
> As :::::: 0.0028 :::::: 0.0097 :::::: 0.0 :::::::: 0.0263
> B :::::: 0.0611 :::::: 0.0481 :::::: 0.0918 :::::: 0.0791
> Ba :::::: 0.024 :::::: 0.0078 :::::: 0.0309 :::::: 0.009
> Ca :::::: 71.2 ::::::::: 44.3 :::::: 88.4 ::::::::::: 9.14
> Cd :::::: 0.0 ::::::::::: 0.0 :::::: 0.0 ::::::::::: 0.0
> Co :::::: 0.001 :::::: 0.0032 :::::: 0.0123 :::::: 0.001
> Cr :::::: 0.0 :::::::::::: 0.0 :::::: 0.0 :::::::::::: 0.0
> Cu :::::: 0.127 ::::::::: 0.238 :::::: 0.326 :::::: 0.0411
> *Fe :::::: 1.64 :::::::::: 1.75 :::::: 5.99 ::::::::: 0.0292*
> K :::::: 82.6 ::::::::::: 169 :::::: 497 ::::::::: 0.223
> Mg:::::: 12.6 :::::::::: 9.27 :::::: 16.5 :::::::::: 1.78
> Mn :::::: 0.218 :::::::: 0.256 :::::: 0.0 ::::::::::: 0.0844
> Mo :::::: 0.0856 :::::: 0.122 :::::: 0.0808 :::::::::::: 0.0
> Na :::::: 27.1 ::::::::: 18.4 :::::: 0.611 :::::::::: 5.84
> Ni :::::: 0.0089 :::::: 0.0087 :::::: 0.0439 :::::: 0.0025
> Pb :::::: 0.0 :::::::::::: 0.0 :::::: 0.0 :::::::::::: 0.0
> Si :::::: 0.313 ::::::::: 0.403 :::::: 1.72 :::::::::: 2.83
> *Zn :::::: 0.4 :::::::::: 0.412 :::::: 1.15 :::::: 0.0167*
> 
> Each of these samples was tested 3 times and the average was taken of all three trials. The only exception was the tank in my room, for this sample only 1 test was completed. (Excuse the messy formatting, the stupid spacing on the forum doesnt work well.)
> 
> My room tank seems a bit high in iron at nearly 6ppm, but that is due to fert dosing the other day, when i was tired and spilled quite a bit extra into the tank by accident. Interestingly the copper levels in this tank are higher too leading me to believe that the concentration of copper in CSM+B is significantly higher then what is claimed on the site as 0.09%.


From:
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...lants-discussions/16603-copper-poisoning.html​
I was adding pretty high levels of CSM+B to the 2 admissions tanks to get my iron up. At the time I was eyeballing the dose and added about 2 spoons of CSM+B whenever I dosed (which is likely what gave me the excess Zn levels in the first place). The yellowing started and I figured it must be iron deficiency so I kept adding more CSM+B to cure it. If you look you see I hit the 0.4 ppm Zn range as well. Compared to the drinking water which had only 0.0167 ppm Zn.

The 0.0167 ppm Zn value the tap water is very close to what Kekon said he was dosing per week (0.006-0.02 ppm of zinc (weekly)) where anything above that gave issues. I wish I could go back in time and experiment with not adding any CSM+B to see if the issue went away.

Thoughts?


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## Cavan Allen

Keep in mind that iron readings are frequently misleading. It is absorbed by plants quickly, especially as ferrous iron. In my experience, if plants like _Mayaca_ look ok, that's enough.

I don't use the CSM+B in part because I like Flourish and because I'm wary of the copper content (I like my shrimp).

I could just try cutting the Flourish dose to 5ml per day (instead of 10) and upping the iron to make up for that. Dunno if there is some mind of zinc absorbing resin.

It would be interesting to see how much zinc makes it past the RO. Still, that's a big increase from tap to tank water. Could be that a higher Zn level in the tap no longer lets me get away with adding so much Flourish.


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## Zapins

Sounds like a plan. Cut the flourish doses. I'd also start adding a bit of RO water if you have it around to try dilute the Zn a bit. See if that helps any.

Aaron, you mentioned you have similar issues with your plants sometimes? What are your thoughts?


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## Cavan Allen

I have some Purigen that needs recharging. Can't hurt the BBA battle I suppose.


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## AaronT

Zapins said:


> Sounds like a plan. Cut the flourish doses. I'd also start adding a bit of RO water if you have it around to try dilute the Zn a bit. See if that helps any.
> 
> Aaron, you mentioned you have similar issues with your plants sometimes? What are your thoughts?


Yeah, I have similar issues. Things will be going great and then stunting and yellowing. If I add more Mg it helps at first as the deficiency signs I get are dark veins and curling leaves, but is it really lack of Mg or just something else hindering Mg uptake. I plan to get my water analyzed as well.

I have access to RO water so I may try reconstituting for a while and see if things improve. I just wish I had a house with a basement so I could keep a large reservoir of RO water to reconstitute all at once rather than using buckets.


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## Cavan Allen

_Ludwigia_ in general seem to be sensitive to this.


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## JeffyFunk

Zapins said:


> Jeffy, when you look at zinc values in your work is that from contaminated soil//ground water? If it is then there are other factors at play. Clays in the soil, the higher pH levels of most soils and organics that bind Zinc can all reduce the amount of soluble zinc getting into plants. So the soil or groundwater readings you are used to seeing might not be directly comparable to our tanks which are essentially clay and organic free and have a pretty consistently low pH.


@ our facility, I'm in charge of the laboratory and we usually analyze TCLP extractions of hazardous materials to see if they have been treated properly for disposal in our landfill. As such, the samples i analyze are totally not related to aquariums or even potable water samples. I almost never analyze drinking water samples and so really don't have any frame of reference of what would be 'normal' metal concentrations...

Also, when you analyze samples for metal analysis, most samples other than drinking water samples need to be digested using concentrated acids. Therefore, pH really isn't an issue w/ the metal analysis because everything is acidified prior to analysis.



Zapins said:


> What I'd be keen on learning is what is the normal Zn concentration in our tap water? Does it routinely go above 0.4 ppm? If so then perhaps it isn't zinc related at all.


As i stated earlier, i don't really know. i'd be a neat project to collect and analyze water samples from people having algae issues or problems with their tanks, but i'd need the samples to analyze first (or at least the data from local water reports...). I've offered to analyze people's water samples...



Zapins said:


> This likely wouldn't work because the Zn toxicity prevents normal use of Iron, so if you add more iron and still have a zinc toxicity the iron still cannot be used and you'd still have iron deficiency-like symptoms.


But if Cavan's [Fe] levels were low to begin with, how can not adding more Fe be useful? If excess Zn is toxic because it works as an inhibitor, then the question becomes how much more Fe can you add to compete w/ the excess Zn for those 'active sites' before you start to cause other issues like algae? I agree that figuring out where the excess Zn is coming from and removing it from the aquarium would be the best thing to do, but how?

Cavan - do you have any nails in there? zinc ornaments? what metal are those plant weights made of?

Regarding Fe analysis, Amano has stated that Fe is the quickest element to be sequestered. That said, my analysis by ICP-OES should only be affected by when the sample is collected relative to when the Fe or traces were dosed (assuming you aren't putting floating plants in your water collection samples...lol). More often than not, my issue w/ Fe analysis is preventing impurities from getting into the samples, resulting in high bias.

I'll admit, having these analysis results does make for one of the more interesting forum topics as of late. Be nice to have more of these types of analysis and discussion.


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## Zapins

Ohh man Jeffy I can get you a lot of water samples. I've got a lot of people in my plant club that could give you samples from any number of tanks with all sorts of things going on along with their tap water. If you are willing then  wonderful I'll start collecting vials. That is a really great offer for the hobby. The main problem with 99% of the issues we have is that we have no way of verifying what we believe. I with you on this being the most interesting topic lately. I'd love to post more on topics like this, but it was hard before since accurate measurements simply weren't available.

There is too much hocus pocus going around online and it all comes back to the water. I would be extremely happy with more water samples  Is there any particular way samples need to be stored before reading? Can samples be stored for long periods of time or does that affect the readings? Glass or plastic container?

I've been thinking for some time now that perhaps what I should do is set up a small tank with plants, grow them normally with EI, use CO2. Then once they are growing at a decent clip, switch out the CO2 tank for an oxygen tank and bubble that into the diffuser, seal up the lid completely so only the positive pressure from the oxygen tank would push out atmospheric air. Then see what a CO2 deficiency really looks like. I am convinced that Tom has us all cross-eyed about CO2 deficiency and it is really not an issue. 

You know, its really odd. I've been doing a lot of reading over the last 2-3 days. I've gone through several dozen sources that talk about soil and then several dozen more that talk about hydroponics solutions and appropriate values. I'm in the process of compiling it all into an easy to read and understand write up so more on that later, but I can say that it seems when it comes to soil samples the values are significantly higher than those for hydroponics solutions, and even hydroponics solutions are roughly 100x more concentrated than what we use for our plants. So a value of a few ppm in soil is not bad, but up to 0.2 Zn is the recommended in hydroponics and then in our tank it is much much lower. I'm convinced this is because of clays/organics/pH/other factors. There was a neat article that listed all the reasons (and there were a ton) Zn in soil can be bound up and made unavailable to plants.

Oh. So the way I understand it, Fe/Zn is not exactly like Ca/Mg uptake where one blocks the uptake of the other via the transports. Its more of an internal issue. Excess Zn blocks the plant from being able to use Fe. I'm not sure if you could get rid of that by increasing the Fe levels like you can with Ca/Mg. Possibly, but 0.04 ppm Fe is an adequate level of iron. If you look in the plant finder 0.1 ppm is the recommended so 0.04 is not far off. Interestingly there seems to be a ratio between iron and a few other nutrients, I'll write it all up soon and post.

By the way what is the accuracy % on the machine you use? If you repeat samples do they all come out the same value or do they vary a bit? I'm guessing some elements are more slippery than others to measure (like potassium).


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## JeffyFunk

Zapins said:


> Ohh man Jeffy I can get you a lot of water samples. I've got a lot of people in my plant club that could give you samples from any number of tanks with all sorts of things going on along with their tap water. If you are willing then  wonderful I'll start collecting vials. That is a really great offer for the hobby. The main problem with 99% of the issues we have is that we have no way of verifying what we believe. I with you on this being the most interesting topic lately. I'd love to post more on topics like this, but it was hard before since accurate measurements simply weren't available.
> 
> There is too much hocus pocus going around online and it all comes back to the water. I would be extremely happy with more water samples  Is there any particular way samples need to be stored before reading? Can samples be stored for long periods of time or does that affect the readings? Glass or plastic container?


According to Standard methods, samples can be collected in either glass or plastic. The only metal with a strict container and holding time is Hg ... and i'm not analyzing samples for Hg since that's a much more involved process. Cavan simply collected samples in ziplock bags... (Ziplock bags are not one of the recommended collection materials, but that's not as important as getting me the samples...) That said, i would restrict the samples to a holding time of <30 days. Also, refridgerate the samples until they are shipped to reduce the chance of bacterial decomposition (more a problem of certain analytes than others, though...).

Samples should be collected so we know the analyst (or at least their initials), date, and what it is (tap, tank x, tank y, before or after fertilization). If they are having an algae issue, please let me know on the sample so when i report them, it all looks okay.

I'd try to gather sample sets from individual people that include the following: date, tap or source water, tank x, tank y, etc... Place all of the samples into a larger ziplock bag and then mail them all together to me. I need at least 100 mL of sample. You can use a measuring cup to approximate the volume and how it relates to the bags.



Zapins said:


> I've been thinking for some time now that perhaps what I should do is set up a small tank with plants, grow them normally with EI, use CO2. Then once they are growing at a decent clip, switch out the CO2 tank for an oxygen tank and bubble that into the diffuser, seal up the lid completely so only the positive pressure from the oxygen tank would push out atmospheric air. Then see what a CO2 deficiency really looks like. I am convinced that Tom has us all cross-eyed about CO2 deficiency and it is really not an issue.


The more I study my tanks, the more I actually think Tom Barr is correct. I think that CO2 is the most difficult nutrient to get correct and also the hardest to control. I think the problem is that a lot of assume CO2 is correct and then we overdose because the plants can't use all of the nutrients we dose... I know that's the case with my tanks, at least. I also think we also over emphasize fertilization in general... maybe because we like to deal with numbers and chemicals and stuff? who knows..



Zapins said:


> By the way what is the accuracy % on the machine you use? If you repeat samples do they all come out the same value or do they vary a bit? I'm guessing some elements are more slippery than others to measure (like potassium).


The accuracy of the ICP-OES is usually pretty good. My biggest concern is always contamination, esp as you approach concentrations near the reporting limits. When we analyze duplicate values, the RPD is usually <5% (The RPD acceptance criteria is <20%). The RPD does increase, however, as you approach the reporting limit, simply because your signal to noise ratio decreases so there is the possibility of noise contributing to the signal. The reporting limits i chose (0.01 ppm for the metals; 1.0 ppm for K, Ca, Mg), esp the metals, are values high enough that i can validate but low enough to see contaminations. In this regard, more sample is always better because then i have enough sample to prepare duplicates and matrix spikes to check for accuracy. Also, sampling consistency can have a huge impact on sample analysis integrity and that's something that, as an analyst, i really have no control over. If you really want to check for sampling integrity, you should have everyone provide a trip blank in their samples. A trip blank is exactly what it sounds like, a sample of DI/RO water that you "sample" like the other samples into an identical container and ship along w/ the other samples. Any contamination in the trip blank will indicate that you didn't sample very well or your container is contaminated, etc.


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## Zapins

Sounds good I'll start saving up samples.

I have a couple of samples I am dying to know about. My old house, the water there was magic. I could grow anything without even trying.


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## BruceF

I don’t know much about chemistry but overdriving plants by means of co2 and heavy fertilization is all the rage among the hydroponic pot growers here in Colorado. Seems these go hand in hand and if you keep increasing one you need to keep increasing the other.


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## JeffyFunk

BruceF said:


> I don't know much about chemistry but overdriving plants by means of co2 and heavy fertilization is all the rage among the hydroponic pot growers here in Colorado. Seems these go hand in hand and if you keep increasing one you need to keep increasing the other.


I don't think this isn't quite right with regards to aquatic plants... w/ aquatic plants, the rate of growth is actually limited by the amount of light. The higher the light, the higher the demand for CO2 & nutrients. The goal of the aquarist is to match the amount of nutrients and CO2 w/ the amount of light. However, w/ aquatic plants, there is actually a point where increasing light does not increase the rate of plant growth because the aquatic plants are no longer able to use the additional light.

Tom Barr had a chart that graphed light intensity (par) versus change of plant mass over time or growth rate (light was the x axis...). In the beginning, as you increase light intensity, the change in plant growth increases as well. Eventually, around 150 par, the graph levels off such that at higher levels of light intensity (>150 par), the change in plant growth no longer increases.

With regards to pot growers where the plants are being grown emersed, then there really is no upper limit since CO2 is no longer limiting. In fact, many pot growers pile on the nutrients, including CO2, in order to get their plants to grow even faster....


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## BruceF

I don't think I said anything about light. Strikes me that the same is true of lots a nutrients more is not necessarily better.


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## Zapins

I wonder if aquatic plants make do with far lower nutrient levels than terrestrial plants because they can absorb nutrients through all surfaces not just the roots. If you have nutrients being delivered evenly all over the plant then perhaps you don't need such high concentrations in the roots to supply the entire plant?

Also, most bodies of water I've tested have very very low nutrient levels and plants tend to grow in sandy areas not soil. The entire setup is low nutrient, so perhaps aquatic plants are better adapted to low nutrient conditions.

On top of that they get less light than other plants, so it sense that they'd need lower concentrations and may even be poisoned by high concentrations.


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## Cavan Allen

There is a titanium(?) grounding probe. No nails, ornaments, etc. Only other metal is probably the filter impeller. I've considered that my macro ferts may be contaminated, but I doubt it. Only thing that makes sense is from the Flourish, thought I have added more in the past and not had problems. Zn getting past my RO? Membranes/filters old, but KH test at least says it's 'pure'. I should send you some RO product and new, reconstituted tank water.


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## Cavan Allen

Zapins said:


> My old house, the water there was magic. I could grow anything without even trying.


Same here.


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## Phil Edwards

Zapins,

Aquatic macrophytes are indeed adapted to survive in (usually) lower nutrient environments than terrestrial systems. By the time groundwater or surface runoff reaches most unimpacted bodies of water the N and P has usually been stripped. That being said, certain areas of the country do have higher suspended nutrient loads than others. The Southeast is a good example. With all the clay suspended in the water there's a massive load of adsorbed P and metals. When that settles out it enriches the sediment quite nicely. 



As for taking and transporting water samples, your best bet is to get a small Nalgene bottle (or many) unless you want to call someone like Fisher Scientific and get real water sample bottles. Make sure to rinse both the bottle and cap at least three times in tank water before sampling, then fill it no more than 3/4 full if you plan on storing it. The best bet for long term storage is freezing them rather than refrigeration. I did that with all my samples when doing my hydrology research and it worked well. If you wish to refrigerate try to get your fridge down to 10C. That'll really slow biological processing down. 

Shipping unfrozen or thawing samples is no good for nutrients like N and P. Bacteria are going to eat all that stuff up in transit. 



Cavan,

Do you have the materials to quit water column trace dosing completely and only supplement the substrate?

I'd be really curious to see what sort of stuff has sorbed onto your substrate. Can you pull out 25 grams (moist) and let it sit in 250mL of RO water for an hour? Pour off the water, ship half off to Jeffy, then run N and P tests on the other half. I was amazed when I did that with year old AS back in the day. I can't remember all the values, but I do know some, especially P, were really high.


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## Cavan Allen

Phil Edwards said:


> Do you have the materials to quit water column trace dosing completely and only supplement the substrate?


I used to have mineralized soil with old Aquasoil over it. Much of that is still in buckets, and it's probably possible to separate a lot of the soil back out, freeze it, and put in back in there. Now I've got a mix of soilmaster and Flourite black over top, and not a whole lot of it. Probably should have made many of the changes I've made recently instead of going back to my old substrate. But I will point out that even when I had full mineralized, I had to do some water column dosing anyway.

Always wondered if Aquasoil releases organics as it gets older.



Phil Edwards said:


> I'd be really curious to see what sort of stuff has sorbed onto your substrate. Can you pull out 25 grams (moist) and let it sit in 250mL of RO water for an hour? Pour off the water, ship half off to Jeffy, then run N and P tests on the other half. I was amazed when I did that with year old AS back in the day. I can't remember all the values, but I do know some, especially P, were really high.


I can do that. I'd planned on sending him some tank water, now that I've done three 50% changes with fully reconstituted water. Also some RO product water to see if there's a bunch of zinc in it.

Now that I've gone full RO, GH is 6 and KH is 3. I wonder a bit about things like iodine (shrimp need that?) and minor trace elements like vanadium and nickel now that there just shouldn't be any being introduced with the Equilibrium or Flourish. May have to find a way to add a source for that too.


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## JeffyFunk

More analysis results. Another instrument we have at work is a TOC analyzer (total organic carbon). This is a machine that measures the carbon containing compounds in your water by converting the carbon to CO2 and measuring the CO2 via an IR detector. Basically, there are two steps. In the first step, the sample is acidified. This converts all the *inorganic carbon* (HCO3- and CO3--) to CO2 and the amount of CO2 is determined. This portion is the TIC (total inorganic carbon). In the second step, an oxidant is added to the sample to decompose all of the *organic carbon* to CO2 and, again, the CO2 is detected. This portion is the TOC (total organic carbon).

The TIC is another way of determining the hardness of the water because it measures the carbon from the bicarbonates and carbonates. Think of hardness this way: To determine hardness, which is reported in CaCO3 equivalents, you can measure the cations (Ca & Mg) or you can measure the anions (HCO3- & CO3--). Previously, we calculated the hardness by measuring the cations (Ca & Mg); now we can measure the hardness by measuring the anions by converting TIC into CaCO3 equivalent. (BTW - this is not an official method for measuring hardness, but theoretically it should work and indeed, the numbers work out to give very similar results.)

While TOC may not be a common analyte we are all familiar with, COD (Chemical oxygen demand) probably is. Both of these techniques analyze for pollution in water samples and are related, though there is no direct correlation between the two. (in other words, you can't say X TOC = Y COD without more research on each sample to determine the exact conversion factor...). BOD (biological oxygen demand) is another method for measuring pollution...

Personally, I do not like COD as a test because the COD test is very hazardous; The test specifies the use of Hg salts, Ag salts, Cr salts, and concentrated Sulfuric Acid. Amano has a "COD" test pod, but i have no idea how it works and, in any case, it cannot be used for reporting purposes because the standardized COD test conditions use the above hazardous chemicals.

In any case, here are the results and calculations (reporting limit = 1.0 ppm)...

Cavan's Tap Water 9/2013:

TIC = 22.0 ppm (183 ppm CaCO3 eq / 10.3 dGH)
TOC = 2.9 ppm

Cavan's Tank Water 9/2013:

TIC = 21.2 ppm (176 ppm CaCO3 eq / 9.9 dGH)
TOC = 12.1 ppm

And since we have no basis for comparison, I'll add in the analysis results from Aaron Talbot's tap & aquariums (i'm still working on getting the metal analysis done and hope to have that done by the end of the week...):

Aaron's Tap Water 9/2013:

TIC = 10.5 ppm (87.7 ppm CaCO3 eq / 4.9 dGH)
TOC = 1.7 ppm

Aaron's Tank #1 90-P 9/2013:

TIC = 11.2 ppm (93.6 ppm CaCO3 eq / 5.2 dGH)
TOC = 10.6 ppm

Aaron's Tank #2 30 Breeder 9/2013:

TIC = 36.0 ppm (300.2 ppm CaCO3 eq / 16.8 dGH)
TOC = 7.8 ppm


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## AaronT

Wow, that GH is way lower than I thought out of the tap. I'm curious to know how much of that is Ca and Mg as I definitely get Mg deficiencies if I don't dose any.


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## JeffyFunk

Here are the analysis results for samples from Aaron Talbot (AT) and Cavan Allen (CA) complied into a nicely formatted table that I hope to continue to use as a standard method of reporting. For clarity sake, i separated the results into two tables, trace metals (incuding Fe) and other results.



Code:


| Sample            | Al  | Ba  | Co  | Cu  | Fe  | Mn  | Mo  | Ni  | Sr  | V   | Zn  | 

| AT Tap 9/2013     | 0.02| 0.02|<0.01| 0.01|<0.01|<0.01|<0.01|<0.01| 0.07|<0.01| 0.01|
| AT 90-P 9/2013    | 0.02| 0.02|<0.01| 0.05| 1.57|<0.01|<0.01|<0.01| 0.10|<0.01| 0.05|
| AT 30 B 9/2013    | 0.06| 0.11|<0.01| 0.01| 0.01|<0.01|<0.01|<0.01| 0.51|<0.01| 0.01|
| CA Tap 9/2013     | 0.03| 0.04|<0.01| 0.04|<0.01|<0.01|<0.01|<0.01| 0.23|<0.01| 0.12|
| CA Tank 9/2013    |<0.01| 0.05|<0.01|<0.01| 0.04|<0.01|<0.01|<0.01| 0.25|<0.01| 0.41|

| Sample            | K   | Ca  | Mg  | TIC | TOC |Gen. Hard. (dGH) | CO3 Hard. (dKH)| 

| AT Tap 9/2013     |  2.0| 18.5|  5.2| 10.5|  1.7|  67.6 ( 3.8 dGH)| 87.7 ( 4.9 dKH)|
| AT 90-P 9/2013    |  100| 33.1| 10.2| 11.2| 10.6|   125 ( 7.0 dGH)| 93.6 ( 5.2 dKH)|
| AT 30 B 9/2013    |  144|  110| 32.3| 36.0|  7.8|   408 (22.8 dGH)|  300 (16.8 dKH)|
| CA Tap 9/2013     |  3.3| 48.4| 10.8| 22.0|  2.9|   165 ( 9.3 dGH)|  183 (10.3 dKH)|
| CA Tank 9/2013    | 40.7| 48.4| 12.0| 21.2| 12.1|   170 ( 9.5 dGH)|  176 ( 9.9 dKH)|

All results are in units of mg/L (ppm). Metal analysis results were analyzed by ICP-OES. TIC & TOC analysis results were analyzed by method SM 3510 C - Heated-Persulfate Oxidation. General Hardness & Carbonate Hardness are in units of ppm CaCO3 eq (calculated). Carbonate Hardness (KH) were calculated from TIC, not a titration. Please note - Limited QA/QC solutions were run on these samples and these analysis results are for personal use only. These results may not be used for regulatory reporting purposes or compliance testing. If anyone else would like their water tested, please feel free to contact me. Thank you.


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## Cavan Allen

Excellent! Thanks Jeff.

May we assume that TOC can be considered a rough (or not so rough measure) of the 'organics' that accumulate in our tanks? I'd like to send you (as I mentioned above) more samples, of RO product water and my tank water now, as it is now reconstituted RO. 

Update on tank:
R. macrandra recovered, as is the inclinata. Cupping on Bacpa innominata is now worse than ever, and my sphaerocarpa is not looking so great. Most plants growing crazy fast, and the green spot seems to be much reduced following a reduction in P. It looks though, that the reduction in Flourish has not gone as well; some plants look a bit washed out even though the iron has been nearly doubled! Hopefully, the water change has reduced the zinc and I can resume adding my old amount of Flourish. 

I wonder if my substrate has sequestered it and is releasing it back into the water? That might be a good reason to try Phil's suggestion of keeping some water to be tested with some removed substrate.


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## Zapins

Woooah great format! I'm really excited for the future of this thread 

I'll be going back home this weekend so I'll try round up some water samples from various houses and tanks and post them over to you for early next week.


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## AaronT

Thanks Jeffy! I had no idea my GH was so low. It seems to vary as I swear I've tested it at 8-9 degrees in the past. 

I've been adding Aquavitro Mineralize in varying amounts after water changes if everyone is wondering where the discrepancy is between my 90-P and my tap water. The 30 breeder's high GH is due to accumulation as I don't change water in that tank hardly ever and top off weekly with more tap water. It's mostly hard water Crypts, swords, and Anubias though so they don't seem to mind. 

After seeing Cavan's results I stopped my trace dosing this week as well and upped my iron dosage (without having seen his results, but assuming mine would be similar given our geographical closeness). I'm having the same washed out look on my plants even while dosing 0.7 ppm of iron / day. 

I know Cavan uses Flourish iron, which is only ferrous iron and I'm dosing a mixture of ferrous and DPTA iron. It would seem from the results that the chelators are doing their job well. 

Well, I guess I'll go back to my trace dosing as zinc buildup does not seem to be an issue for me.


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## Zapins

Code:


| Sample             | Al  |  [B]B[/B]   | Ba   | Co  |  Cu  |  Fe  |  Mn  |  Mo  | Ni  |  Sr  | V |  Zn | 

| MT Tap 5/16/2006   | 0.3 | 0.08 |  0   |  0  | 0.04 | 0.03 | 0.08 |  0   |  0   | NA | NA | 0.02|
| MT Adm 1 5/16/2006 |  0  | 0.06 | 0.02 |  0  | 0.13 | 1.64 | 0.22 | 0.09 | 0.01 | NA | NA | 0.40|
| MT Adm 2 5/16/2006 |  0  | 0.05 | 0.01 |  0  | 0.24 | 1.75 | 0.26 | 0.12 | 0.01 | NA | NA | 0.41|
| MT Room 5/16/2006  |  0  | 0.09 | 0.03 | 0.01| 0.33 | 5.99 |  0   | 0.08 | 0.04 | NA | NA | 1.15|

| Sample             |   K   |  Ca  |  Mg  |  [B]Na[/B]  |  TIC |  TOC |    Hardness(calc)   (dGH) |

| MT Tap 5/16/2006   |  0.22 | 9.14 | 1.78 | 5.84 |  NA  |  NA  |  NA ppm CaCO3 eq ( NA dGH)|
| MT Adm 1 5/16/2006 |  82.6 | 71.2 | 12.6 | 27.1 |  NA  |  NA  |  NA ppm CaCO3 eq ( NA dGH)|
| MT Adm 2 5/16/2006 |  169  | 44.3 | 9.27 | 18.4 |  NA  |  NA  |  NA ppm CaCO3 eq ( NA dGH)|
| MT Room 5/16/2006  |  497  | 88.4 | 16.5 | 0.61 |  NA  |  NA  |  NA ppm CaCO3 eq ( NA dGH)|

I wrote up my old results from 2006 in the same format as you so we can keep it with the rest of the values. Luckily the machine I had my samples on was able to measure boron and Na, but not some of the other values like yours had, so its not a perfect match but probably still useful. I added the B and Na values in.

I also changed all values less than 0.01 to 0 so that it is easier to see the values. I suggest you write them this way too, so we can see low values more easily.

I was dosing sodium bicarb in the Admissions tank 1 and 2 to buffer the water, so that is why the sodium values are higher in there. I was also getting plant growth issues at the time. A lot of stunting, dark plants, poor growth on my java ferns and R. Macrandra, and all other plants.

I wonder if I was having Sodium issues or possibly Zinc issues like Cavan. My Zn was at 0.4 in all tanks and the tanks showed similar issues long term. I am beginning to suspect that dosing CSM+B to get your iron above 0.1 ppm is a bad idea since it adds a lot of other undesirable micros to the water column. I am not sure what values of sodium cause toxicity in aquatic plants, I suspect I will have to do a bit more reading to find out.

Info reformatted from my old thread:
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...lants-discussions/16603-copper-poisoning.html

*MT Adm 1 5/16/2006*​Plant species Affected: rotalla rotundifolia, ludwigia repens, rotalla wallichii, "mermaids tail"​Description: Doing poorly / dying, Plants were showing iron deficiency like symptoms​Plant Species Not Affected: HC, java fern, anubias nana/petite, glandulosa, a larger kind of sagiteria​
*MT Adm 2 5/16/2006*​Plant species Affected:​Description: Newly planted tank, plants have not have time to show issues​Plant Species Not Affected:​
*MT Room 5/16/2006*​Plant species Affected: S. subulata, R. wallichi, R. rotundifolia​Description: Sag has many dead leaves, the rotalas not growing suspected N deficiency​Plant Species Not Affected: Downoi, Anubias nana, A. nana petite, Crpt. Wendtii​
Description of tanks:


zapins said:


> My room tank seems a bit high in iron at nearly 6ppm, but that is due to fert dosing the other day, when i was tired and spilled quite a bit extra into the tank by accident. Interestingly the copper levels in this tank are higher too leading me to believe that the concentration of copper in CSM+B is significantly higher then what is claimed on the site as 0.09%.


----------



## Zapins

I agree Aaron, I think you should keep your micro dosing as is, you are looking pretty good on that front. Can you take some pictures of your plants when they start looking washed out? I suspect you are on the money when you say its Mg deficiency just judging by the very low Mg content of your tap water.

I think this thread is really starting to make a lot of sense in terms of weird plant growth I've seen in the past.

Jeffy - is Na measurable using your machine? It would be really nice to get some values for that as well since Na is something that a lot of people add to their house water and could cause issues with plants.


----------



## JeffyFunk

Cavan Allen said:


> May we assume that TOC can be considered a rough (or not so rough measure) of the 'organics' that accumulate in our tanks?


TOC is a measurement of 'organics' in your water. The problem with 'organics' in general is simply the fact that (1) there are multiple ways of measuring 'organics' such as TOC (total organic carbon), COD (chemical oxygen demand), BOD (biological oxygen demand), (2) there is no easy method for the hobbyist to use to measure organic pollution at home (i.e. there is no Seachem or ELOS or API test kit for organics analysis) and (3) because of problem #2, there are not many references to what 'acceptable' TOC/COD/BOD values are. What values of TOC/COD/BOD are considered normal for drinking water? What values of TOC/COD/BOD are considered "high" with regards to aquarium organic pollutants? "medium"? "low"? As hobbyists, we all want to say "a TOC/COD/BOD value above X is considered too high and will cause Y algae (Y most likely being BBA)". Each of these techniques are valid and useful measures of organic pollution, but not necessarily interchangeable with each other.

COD is probably the most recognizable method of the three (TOC, COD, BOD) but, as I explained previously, it is not a technique i am enthusiastic about. The only person who routinely "analyzes" organic pollution as COD is Amano and, for the record, i have no idea how the ADA COD Pod works. Because the ADA COD Pods does not resemble the official method for COD analysis, i'm not even sure those results can be trusted.

Therefore, the main problem with TOC analysis is the fact that we just don't have a large collection of data to draw upon to say (1) what's an ideal TOC value range and (2) what's a high / problematic TOC value. As far as I know, nobody can tell me that. Even the people that hark how bad organics are, like Niko, probably can't give specific value ranges (if anyone can, please let us know!). To remedy this problem, we simply are going to have to have samples analyzed and posted so we can all look at the results and analyze them.


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## JeffyFunk

Zapins said:


> Jeffy - is Na measurable using your machine? It would be really nice to get some values for that as well since Na is something that a lot of people add to their house water and could cause issues with plants.


When i get a chance, I can try to add Na to my ICP-OES standard and reanalyze the samples when I get time. Na is not a metal we (my work) needs to analyze and report so it's never been a priority to analyze.

I tried to add B to my ICP-OES standard ages ago, but that element messed up my ICP-OES analysis so i'm very hesitant to analyze for it. B, unlike the other elements, will interact w/ glassware and that causes a host of issues...


----------



## JeffyFunk

Code:


| Sample             | Al  |  [B]B[/B]   | Ba   | Co  |  Cu  |  Fe  |  Mn  |  Mo  | Ni   | Sr | V  |  Zn | 

| MT Tap 5/16/2006   | 0.3 | 0.08 |  0   |  0  | 0.04 | 0.03 | 0.08 |  0   |  0   | NA | NA | 0.02|
| MT Adm 1 5/16/2006 |  0  | 0.06 | 0.02 |  0  | 0.13 | 1.64 | 0.22 | 0.09 | 0.01 | NA | NA | 0.40|
| MT Adm 2 5/16/2006 |  0  | 0.05 | 0.01 |  0  | 0.24 | 1.75 | 0.26 | 0.12 | 0.01 | NA | NA | 0.41|
| MT Room 5/16/2006  |  0  | 0.09 | 0.03 | 0.01| 0.33 | 5.99 |  0   | 0.08 | 0.04 | NA | NA | 1.15|

| Sample             |  K  |  Ca  |  Mg  |  [B]Na[/B]  |  TIC |  TOC |Gen. Hard. (dGH) |

| MT Tap 5/16/2006   | 0.22| 9.14 | 1.78 | 5.84 |  NA  |  NA  |  30.2 ( 1.7 dGH)|
| MT Adm 1 5/16/2006 | 82.6| 71.2 | 12.6 | 27.1 |  NA  |  NA  |   230 (12.9 dGH)|
| MT Adm 2 5/16/2006 | 169 | 44.3 | 9.27 | 18.4 |  NA  |  NA  |   149 ( 8.3 dGH)|
| MT Room 5/16/2006  | 497 | 88.4 | 16.5 | 0.61 |  NA  |  NA  |   289 (16.2 dGH)|

Zapins - I've updated your table w/ the General Hardness calculations (units of ppm CaCO3 eq). Here are the formula's (they were posted previously in this thread):

Hardness (calc), ppm CaCO3 eq, = 2.497[Ca] + 4.118[Mg]
dGH = Hardness (calc) / 17.848


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## Zapins

Fantastic thanks.


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## JeffyFunk

Updated the analysis tables. I just (finally) realized that TIC can be converted into units of Carbonate Hardness, KH. Now the tables have GH (general hardness) and KH (carbonate hardness). Hope this helps.


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## Zapins

Code:


| Sample            | Al  | Ba  | Co  | Cu  | Fe  | Mn  | Mo  | Ni  | Sr  | V   | Zn  | 

| AT Tap 9/2013     | 0.02| 0.02|  0  | 0.01|  0  |  0  |  0  |  0  | 0.07|  0  | 0.01|
| AT 90-P 9/2013    | 0.02| 0.02|  0  | 0.05| 1.57|  0  |  0  |  0  | 0.10|  0  | 0.05|
| AT 30 B 9/2013    | 0.06| 0.11|  0  | 0.01| 0.01|  0  |  0  |  0  | 0.51|  0  | 0.01|
| CA Tap 9/2013     | 0.03| 0.04|  0  | 0.04|  0  |  0  |  0  |  0  | 0.23|  0  | 0.12|
| CA Tank 9/2013    |  0  | 0.05|  0  |  0  | 0.04|  0  |  0  |  0  | 0.25|  0  | 0.41|

| Sample            | K   | Ca  | Mg  | TIC | TOC |Gen. Hard. (dGH) | CO3 Hard. (dKH)| 

| AT Tap 9/2013     |  2.0| 18.5|  5.2| 10.5|  1.7|  67.6 ( 3.8 dGH)| 87.7 ( 4.9 dKH)|
| AT 90-P 9/2013    |  100| 33.1| 10.2| 11.2| 10.6|   125 ( 7.0 dGH)| 93.6 ( 5.2 dKH)|
| AT 30 B 9/2013    |  144|  110| 32.3| 36.0|  7.8|   408 (22.8 dGH)|  300 (16.8 dKH)|
| CA Tap 9/2013     |  3.3| 48.4| 10.8| 22.0|  2.9|   165 ( 9.3 dGH)|  183 (10.3 dKH)|
| CA Tank 9/2013    | 40.7| 48.4| 12.0| 21.2| 12.1|   170 ( 9.5 dGH)|  176 ( 9.9 dKH)|

I edited AT and CA's results so we can more easily see the values below 0.01 as 0.


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## AaronT

Cool to know I'm growing Eriocaulons in a KH of 5 just fine and dandy. 

I'll have to send some more samples. I'm curious to know how well my RO unit works and also curious to know the analysis of my parent's well water. That stuff was magic water and I'm not above hauling buckets.


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## Zapins

Cavan and Aaron, can you describe what the NO3 and PO4 levels were in your tank at the time you sent the samples to Jeffy and also what issues or good things were going on in your tanks (we already know this for Cavan).


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## AaronT

Zapins said:


> Cavan and Aaron, can you describe what the NO3 and PO4 levels were in your tank at the time you sent the samples to Jeffy and also what issues or good things were going on in your tanks (we already know this for Cavan).


I have no idea what NO3 and PO4 levels were. I wasn't dosing a lot so they likely were not too high.

I was having some stunting on more difficult species like Ludwigia sphaerocarpa. I've sinced up the nitrate dosing and CO2 a little bit and have noticed an improvement.


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## Zapins

Some interesting info about clado and Cu and Zn. It won't grow above 0.08 ppm Zn and above 0.12 ppm Cu.

Do you have clado in your tanks Cavan?

Cladophora glomerata grows well between 15-25°C and its growth limits are 6-30°C, at 33°C and up the algae starts turning white and dying. Higher light promotes more prolific branching.










Studies on the Growth of Riverian Cladophora in Culture​Archiv fur Mikrobiologie 58, 21-29(1967)
B.A. Whitton​


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## Cavan Allen

I saw a tiny bit and removed it. I've not seen any more since I backed off the P a bit. IME, that usually does it; I don't think it's nearly the monster people make it out to be.


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## Zapins

How are your plants doing Cavan? Have you seen any improvements and what have you changed?

Also, I sent Jeffy 3 samples of water so we might have interesting new results to look over soon


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## Cavan Allen

_R. macrandra_ fully recovered. _L. arcuata_ looking better. Big reduction of green spot, and the BBA now seems to only grow on inanimate objects, which I suppose is an improvement... Pretty much everything is growing faster and more robustly. Except the innominata, which is just as bad as ever with the curled leaves. I just can't grow that plant properly !

I sent some more samples too. Hopefully, just dumping a bunch of ferts and going on vacation doesn't ruin things.


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## Zapins

And the only significant change is using RO water and reduced micro mix?

I want to add that photo to the deficiency database as zinc toxicity if that is what we agree it was due to.


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## Cavan Allen

Added that second canister, turned up co2, reduced P a bit.


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## Zapins

You did those things in addition to using RO and less micros or you only did 2nd canister, more CO2 and less P and nothing else?


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## Cavan Allen

All of it.


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## Phil Edwards

FASCINATING! 





'nuff said.


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## Zapins

I'm having a similar issue in my new apartment with rotalas stunting. I'll give it another week to be sure its not just the plants adjusting to their new tank. I'll send some water from this place to be tested and see.

The arrow points to when it was added to the tank. All the "growth" above the arrow is in my tank. It has been in the water for about a week now. Notice the curling cupping leaves and mangled looking new growth.


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## Zapins

Interesting info I just found:

Sodium, cobalt, silicon and selenium can be beneficial to some plant species but they are not essential or even necessary for growth.










From:
http://www.soils.wisc.edu/~barak/soilscience326/listofel.htm​
Did a bit more digging and found this info. The concentrations below are suggested concentrations for the substrate. The values are in mg/Kg, which are essentially the same units as mg/L which translates directly into ppm. It seems that this guy suggests about 1000x higher nutrients then we typically dose, so if you simply divide by 1000 you get the values on the right of the graph which I added. These seem to be very close to what we consider appropriate dosing for aquatic plants and furthermore, they are very close to my previous research on what levels of micros are needed and what levels are toxic. I think this is probably the best summary of appropriate concentrations so far.











> Please note that concentrations, whether in mg/kg (=ppm, parts per million) or Percent (%), are always based on the weight of dry matter, instead of the fresh weight. Fresh weight includes both the weight of the dry matter and the weight of the water in the tissue. Since the percentage of water can vary greatly, by convention, all concentrations of elements are based on dry matter weights.


From:
Typical concentrations sufficient for plant growth. After E. Epstein. 1965. "Mineral metabolism" pp. 438-466. in: Plant Biochemistry (J.Bonner and J.E. Varner, eds.) Academic Press, London. 
http://www.soils.wisc.edu/~barak/soilscience326/macronut.htm​


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## OTPT

I think your concentration of NO3, PO4, SO4 need some edits?
Because he probably meant nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur elements.
Not nitrate, phosphate, and sulphate.


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## JeffyFunk

Here are more analysis results for samples from Aaron Talbot (AT) and Cavan Allen (CA). (I never did get Zapin's samples... boo) For clarity sake, results below my reporting limit of 0.01 ppm in the micro nutrients table will be reported as "<" (less than the detection limit). B results are not available (n/a). I added Na to my ICP-OES Std so now i have those metal results.



Code:


| Sample             | Al  | B   | Ba  | Co  | Cu  | Fe  | Mn  | Mo  | Ni  | Sr  | V   | Zn  | 

| CA RO 9/12/13      |  <  | n/a |  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.03|  <  |  <  |
| CA Tank 9/12/13    |  <  | n/a | 0.04|  <  |  <  | 0.04|  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.17|  <  | 0.27|
| CA T w/ Sub 9/16/13| 0.08| n/a | 0.04|  <  |  <  | 0.10|  <  | 0.01|  <  | 0.15|  <  | 0.03|
| AT RO 9/18/13      |  <  | n/a |  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  |
| AT Tap 9/18/13     | 0.01| n/a | 0.71|  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.32|  <  | 0.01| 0.41|  <  | 0.05|
| AT 90P 9/18/13     | 0.01| n/a | 0.01|  <  | 0.08| 1.15|  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.21|  <  | 0.04|

| Sample             | K   | Ca  | Mg  | Na  | TIC | TOC |Gen. Hard. (dGH) | CO3 Hard. (dKH)| 

| CA RO 9/12/13      |  1.1|  6.6|  1.6|  7.0|  5.6|  1.8|  23.1 ( 1.3 dGH)| 46.4 ( 2.6 dKH)|
| CA Tank 9/12/13    | 35.8| 27.2|  7.4| 17.7| 12.7|  9.3|  98.4 ( 5.5 dGH)|  106 ( 5.9 dKH)|
| CA T w/ Sub 9/16/13| 34.7| 25.9|  6.7| 18.3|  8.8|  8.9|  92.3 ( 5.2 dGH)| 73.0 ( 4.1 dKH)|
| AT RO 9/18/13      | <1.0|  1.3| <1.0|  3.1|  1.2| <1.0|   4.5 ( 0.3 dGH)|  9.8 ( 0.6 dKH)|
| AT Tap 9/18/13     |  9.7| 28.5| 18.4|155  |  5.4|  1.0|   147 ( 8.2 dGH)| 44.8 ( 2.5 dKH)|
| AT 90P 9/18/13     | 68.2| 36.6| 10.3|  9.8| 10.9| 12.9|   134 ( 7.5 dGH)| 91.2 ( 5.1 dKH)|

All results are in units of mg/L (ppm). Metal analysis results were analyzed by ICP-OES. TIC & TOC analysis results were analyzed by method SM 3510 C - Heated-Persulfate Oxidation. General Hardness & Carbonate Hardness are in units of ppm CaCO3 eq (calculated). Carbonate Hardness (KH) were calculated from TIC, not a titration. Please note - Limited QA/QC solutions were run on these samples and these analysis results are for personal use only. These results may not be used for regulatory reporting purposes or compliance testing. If anyone else would like their water tested, please feel free to contact me. Thank you.


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## Zapins

Woah first thing I notice is Aaron's tap water has a lot of sodium in it. 155 ppm is quite high. By some hydroponics measures that is too high to grow plants in properly. Though the levels of sodium seem to vary considerably on what is healthy, so I am somewhat unsure what the limit is.

Have you ever grown plants in tap water Aaron? Any issues with them?

Also, I'm not sure what happened to the package. I shipped it out ages ago in a priority mail box. I had 3x1 gallon ziplock bags full of water from each different source. They were all double bagged and marked with "fragile" on the box so they should have been fine. Perhaps they started leaking along the way and were removed? Do they do that kind of thing? I have no idea how to find out what happened to the package since I didn't get tracking on it.

What does "CA T w/ Sub" mean?


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## AaronT

Zapins said:


> Woah first thing I notice is Aaron's tap water has a lot of sodium in it. 155 ppm is quite high. By some hydroponics measures that is too high to grow plants in properly. Though the levels of sodium seem to vary considerably on what is healthy, so I am somewhat unsure what the limit is.
> 
> Have you ever grown plants in tap water Aaron? Any issues with them?


It's not my tap water. It's my parent's tap water that I used for many years with really great results. I think my Dad is adding something to buffer the water from being too acidic, which is likely the source of the excess Na. I'll have to ask him about that. It's well water so at least it should be fairly consistent. The first results Jeffy posted were the tap water in my condo.


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## Cavan Allen

I take from reading the report that my RO unit must be pretty tired at this point and it's likely time to replace the membrane/prefilters. Correct? The product water is not exactly pure h2o. 

I guess I need to just throw out that KH kit; it reads about half that. And, perhaps at least until I fix up the RO (a Seachem Pinnacle unit), I don't need to add any more alkaline buffer. 

Still quite a bit of zinc. I've done another change since the last samples, but at least it appears to be down a bit. It doesn't look like it's coming out of the substrate anyway. 

I'd like to recharge my Purigen and see what that does to the TOC.


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## Zapins

*Aaron*
Looking back at your parent's house compared with your apartment water there are a few differences. The Ca:Mg ratio is different. The water at your apartment is 3.55 : 1 vs. your parent's house which is 1.55 : 1. Your parent's house water is also about twice as hard, but half as much KH. Your parents house also has 0.32 ppm of Mn, which is a lot higher than your apartment house (less than 0.01 ppm). And your parent's house also has 0.71 Ba and 0.41 Sr compared with your apartment which has 0.04 Ba and 0.23 Sr.

I don't think Ba and Sr have much do to with anything since they aren't used by plants or even useful to plants.

So it seems like the main difference between your new and old water is a lot more Mn, and a different Ca and Mg ratio which makes the water more mineral rich but softer.

I'm not sure if what you dad is doing to the water is affecting the Ca/Mg ratio or the GH/KH, I suppose you'll have to find out and post back here before we start experimenting with different ratios.

Interestingly though I've seen in a couple of places that the ideal Ca:Mg ratio is thought to be 2:1, but in several more places it is supposed to be a 4:1, some even say as high as 7:1. But the Mn increase is interesting...

*Cavan*
Yep, looks like your RO membrane is in need of replacing, lots of K/Ca/Mg/Na coming through.

What does "CA T w/ Sub 9/16/13" mean? Sub?


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## Zapins

Some of Kekon's micro-mix values. I'm surprised that he added so much Mn, I wouldn't have thought 0.15 ppm was beneficial. I'll have to look into that more.



kekon said:


> Sure, there is NO secret
> At first i must say that all the micros ared dosed ONLY to changed water and only Fe and Mn are dosed daily. This routine ensures that all the micros are not depleted after WC.
> I dose the following levels to changed water (50% water change). All values in ppm:
> 
> Fe: 0.3
> Mn: 0.15 EDTA
> Zn: 0.02 EDTA
> B: 0.02..0.04 (i'm not sure what level is optimal yet) H3BO3
> Cu: 0.025 EDTA
> Mo: 0.005 (ammonium molybdate)
> Ti: 0.005 (it's not neccesary) (TiCl3)
> Ni: 0.002 (it will probably work without nickel as well) (NiCl2 * 6H2O)
> C6H8O6: a pinch  (vit. C prevents the solution from oxidizing)
> 
> RO water after reconstituting:
> 
> Ca: 25 (CaCO3)
> Mg: 5 (MgSO4)
> Na: 2 (NaHCO3)
> Cl: 5 (CaCl2)
> SO4: 40
> K: 10 (K2SO4)
> 
> Daily doses:
> 
> Fe: 0.05
> Mn: 0.027
> Mo: 0.00002
> PO4: 0.15..0.25
> NO3: 1 ppm (the dose is not estabilished yet but i've been adding 1..1.5 ppm daily so far)


http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...-how-my-own-micro-macro-ferts.html#post262668


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## AaronT

Funny you should mention the high Mn content of my folks water. I just ordered some manganese sulfate to mess with. I remember reading some old threads about cloning Tropica Master Grow, which had a large quantity of Mn as compared to other trace ferts. 

I had been using CSM+B, but am thinking about stopping given my high Cu count. That would explain why I can't keep shrimp. 

I'm not certain my Dad is adding anything to the water. I know the neighbor does because it's too acidic and eats through the pipes over time and I imagine their aquifers are similar.


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## Zapins

I'm beginning to think that perhaps we don't need to be dosing as many micros as we were led to believe. It seems there is generally enough in our water as is. 

Iron would probably be the exception.


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## Zapins

More tomorrow, but I wanted to get someone's opinion on this. A study I read tested Mn toxicity in aquatic plants and found that 0.4 mM using MnCl2.4H2O caused something like a 26% decrease in growth rate in Spirodela polyrhiza.

To convert mM to ppm I followed these instructions:
http://forum.onlineconversion.com/showthread.php?t=17887​
Molar mass of MnCl2.4H2O = 197.905169 g/mol

0.4 mM is 0.0004 mol/L and multiply by molar mass to get grams per liter.

Since:
1000 mg = 1 g
1000 mL = 1 L

So 0.079 g/L = 0.079 mg/mL = *0.079 ppm* since the two factors of 1000 cancel

Did I do that correctly?


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## JeffyFunk

So many comments! Where to start!

Cavan sent me a sample of Water w/ substrate so "T w/ Sub" stands for Tank Water w/ Substrate. I didn't want to make the table excessively big for one label so that's what i called it. Someone suggested previously in this thread that maybe the substrate was leaching things into the aquarium water so this was a way to test that. This sample was filtered and then run through the analysis instruments. If the substrate is Aqua soil, then i would say that it indeed has some buffering or cation exchange capacity and that's what we're seeing relative to the aquarium water.

Also, it does look like the [Zn] is going down so that's a good thing.

If that RO water sample from Cavan is the actual RO product, then i would say, yes, it needs to be updated / maintained since it's not nearly as clean as Aaron's RO product...

Ba is just everywhere so i report it. Sr seems to be more important to salt water people, so i include it just because. Also, the damn Agilent technician seemed to make such a big deal over Sr that i include it just because as well...

I reanalyzed the previous samples i got for the [Na] values. If a moderator could help me, i will send you the values to update the post since i can't edit those old posts anymore...

It's funny you mention the [Mn] value. I remember trying the GLA suggestion on how to make 'Tropica Master Gro' by adding MnSO4 to Miller's Micromix... I did try it, but i don't remember seeing any change in my plants so i just went back to using Plantex CSM+B. Also, that now begs the question - what type of Mn do you need to add? Is an unchelated form, like MnSO4, okay to use? Or do you need to use a chelated form, like Mn EDTA or gluconate? Do they even make a Mn gluconate compound? What type of Mn is used in the plantex CSM+B? I know that with Fe, for example, you have to use the chelated form - the unchelated form will cause Algae.

I would think the best way to test it would be to make up a separate solution of Mn and then dose that with the micro solution. That way you can change the amount you add and see if that makes any difference...

Another thing that was mentioned was the Ca:Mg ratio. Everywhere you look, people recommend a 4:1 ratio... except in the method of controlled imbalances by Christian Rubilar. He recommends a 1:4 ratio... I just know that in my experience, when i dosed PPS-Pro with the MgSO4, i got the RODOPHYTAS SP. 3 algae as he mentioned in his post. Once i removed the MgSO4 from my PPS-Pro mixture, the algae went away.

And Zapins, yes, that calculation is correct w/ mM. mM is used a lot in microbiology from what i can remember... I remember having to do a lot of calculations for my labmates when i took microbiology and biochemistry...


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## Yo-han

Zapins said:


> More tomorrow, but I wanted to get someone's opinion on this. A study I read tested Mn toxicity in aquatic plants and found that 0.4 mM using MnCl2.4H2O caused something like a 26% decrease in growth rate in Spirodela polyrhiza.
> 
> To convert mM to ppm I followed these instructions:
> http://forum.onlineconversion.com/showthread.php?t=17887​
> Molar mass of MnCl2.4H2O = 197.905169 g/mol
> 
> 0.4 mM is 0.0004 mol/L and multiply by molar mass to get grams per liter.
> 
> Since:
> 1000 mg = 1 g
> 1000 mL = 1 L
> 
> So 0.079 g/L = 0.079 mg/mL = *0.079 ppm* since the two factors of 1000 cancel
> 
> Did I do that correctly?


Didn't do the calculations, but this seems about right. I didn't read the original paper but you mention they use MnCl2.4H2O. This is totally different than chelated Mn. I've seen toxicity reports of several metals where they tested chelated vs unchelated and unchelated is always a factor 10-1000 more toxic.

About the need for traces/iron. I've seen many clients not using them and plants never grow well. Without adding any NO3 and PO4 (just what comes from the fishfood etc.) trces vs no traces is a huge difference. What about only iron? This will do nothing. In our shop a sign adviced to use iron supplements for red plants. Obvious this sign was not clear enough because we had dozens of people coming back using iron but no traces. It did the plants no good. Off course I need to mention that Dutch tap water is probably one of the cleanest in the world. No chlorine or anything and minimum amounts of heavy metals: http://www.vitens.nl/overvitens/water/waterkwaliteit/Waterkwaliteit/WZ02_Pb.%20Leidsche%20Rijn.PDF (it's in Dutch but for those interested, and yes, I know I'm lucky )


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## JeffyFunk

Yo-han said:


> Off course I need to mention that Dutch tap water is probably one of the cleanest in the world. No chlorine or anything and minimum amounts of heavy metals: http://www.vitens.nl/overvitens/water/waterkwaliteit/Waterkwaliteit/WZ02_Pb.%20Leidsche%20Rijn.PDF (it's in Dutch but for those interested, and yes, I know I'm lucky )


Interesting for a couple of reasons... First of all, we have a TOC value near the reporting limit of 1.0 ppm. That's consistent with what i analyze for the tap waters. (Finally, a reference value!) Second of all, why would they report Fe & Mn in units of ppm and the rest of the metals in units of ppb? odd...


----------



## Yo-han

How many references do you want? You can get it from every pumpstation in the Netherlands

I think the ppm vs ppb is because the numbers are way smaller. 0.00017 ppm doesn't read easy. 450 ppb sounds like a lot


----------



## JeffyFunk

Yo-han said:


> I think the ppm vs ppb is because the numbers are way smaller. 0.00017 ppm doesn't read easy. 450 ppb sounds like a lot


That doesn't really make sense, though... If you look at Mn, it's reported as <0.005 ppm... Wouldn't <5 ppb be better? B has a reporting limit of 10 ppb (or 0.010 ppm) so i don't think it's the fact that the actual value is much higher... Also, when they go and report the Max Wet. (i'm guessing that's maximum allowed or something), both Fe & Al have the same value 200 ppb or 0.200 ppm. You can't really argue that reporting the [Fe] in ppb is too high since Al has the same value and several of the other metals have higher values even.

I just know that when i read metal reports from other analytical laboratories, drinking waters are typically reported in ppb and non-potable waters are typically reported in ppm (because that is the unit of measurement that most of the regulations are written in, ppb for drinking water, ppm for non-potable water). Yes, it's trivial to convert between ppm and ppb but still.. just odd...


----------



## JeffyFunk

So with all of this discussion of Mn, who wants to try to dosing additional Mn to their aquarium? GLA sells MnSO4, but i'm not so sure that an unchelated Mn source is really the way to go...

I looked up the composition of Plantex CSM+B and the Mn (2%) in that microelements mix is chelated with EDTA. Therefore, i'm thinking if anyone wants to experiment with the addition of more Mn, it should be in a chelated form, not an unchelated form.

From previous fertilizer experiments, i found the following company that does sell a chelated Mn fertilizer:

https://customhydronutrients.com

Look through the 'Dry nutrient Salts', then 'Micro nutrients', then 'Chelated Micronutrients'. This webpage also has some nice information on the role of Mn with terrestrial plants. The main points they raise are: (1) Mn deficiency symptoms looks like Fe deficiency symptoms, (2) Mn is used mainly in REDOX reactions and the photosynthesis metabolic pathway, (3) free (unchelated) Mn is easily absorbed by the substrate and (4) free Mn will compete for Fe for chelation - meaning that the addition of chelated Mn will keep Fe in a chelated state and more available to the plant to uptake.

Thoughts?


----------



## Cavan Allen

Yo-han said:


> Obvious this sign was not clear enough because we had dozens of people coming back using iron but no traces. It did the plants no good.





Zapins said:


> I'm beginning to think that perhaps we don't need to be dosing as many micros as we were led to believe. It seems there is generally enough in our water as is.


I was dosing 5mls of Iron and 10mls of Flourish daily. When I reversed that, some plants looked really pale. In other words, color was worse even though the iron content was doubled. I won't be backing off traces again.


----------



## Zapins

Hmm I suppose not. Then again it all depends on how fast you are driving the plants. High light and CO2 you need extra traces, medium light and CO2 is it always necessary? I'm not so sure. Probably small amounts. It just seems to me that toxicities are more of an issue than I had thought before.

I'll be sending off two water samples from my apartment tomorrow. I think there is something going on since my plants are twisting. Will be interesting either way.

I'm going to try get another water sample from my old house this weekend when I drive up, no promises since the new tenants might not let me but I'll cross my fingers.


----------



## AaronT

So my Dad says he's not adding anything to the water. I wonder where all that Na naturally comes from? I grew great plants in that water for several years so the Na thresholds must be a lot higher than we thought.


----------



## Cavan Allen

Well, I've got a nice stunting event going on now. The macrandra is stunted again, as is H. glomeratus and Staurogyne repens! Nice. All this and I'm basically where I started. When I went away on vacation, I just threw some extra ferts in and left. Sphaerocarpa looked good when I came back. Now not so much. Tested the water now and P is at about 1.5, N at approximately 20, which is more than I thought it would be. I can cut the Flourish Nitrogen dose to 2ml per day instead of 2.75, as Seachem says that the equivalent of the kno3 I was adding is really closer to the first number there. Even so, that hardly sounds like something that would cause leaves to get all crinkly. Only other thing different recently was that I cleaned out one of my filters recently, but even then, I used tank water. The best explanation is probably that this tank is cursed.


----------



## Phil Edwards

*Aaron*, does your dad have a water softener attached to the water supply lines? If that's the case then I'd bet that's where the Na is coming from. Most of those systems use Na -> XYZ ion exchange resins.

LOL *Jeff*, I just read your post about Mn being used in redox and photosynthetic mechanisms...I swear I didn't read that before emailing you yesterday. HAHAHA!

@whoever it was talking about elemental N vs NO3 concentrations. My understanding is most tests are actually reporting elemental N found in NO3, NO3, NH3 etc and should properly be reported as NO3-N; i.e. nitrate nitrogen rather than the NO3 the test chemicals are affected by/affect.

Interesting topic guys. *Zapins*, I remember when you were a wet behind the ears kid just heading to college. You've really grown into your own! Keep up the awesome research; it's helping enlighten me, if nobody else, and I appreciate it.


----------



## Zapins

Thanks Phil!  It's funny I was thinking about my writing style from when I first signed up till now. Lots of changes. I think the forum has actually helped me practice my writing/reading skills a lot. I recently took the MCAT and scored well in the English section which is apparently the hardest section to improve in. I think this had a lot to do with reading people's posts and figuring out their main points over the years.

By the way where have you been recently? I don't recall seeing you post too much the past few months?

I also agree about the N --> NO3 observation. Elemental N is not found in nature floating around as an ion. That is why I wrote it as NO3. Also, it doesn't matter if it is NH3, NO2, NO3, or NH4 its all the same % usable N since they didn't record it by weight, but rather by the ratio.

Cavan, I think it would be interesting to take two samples of water. One sample when your plants are growing well, have that analyzed, then another sample of water when you see stunting. It would be very interesting to see the differences.


----------



## AaronT

Phil Edwards said:


> *Aaron*, does your dad have a water softener attached to the water supply lines? If that's the case then I'd bet that's where the Na is coming from. Most of those systems use Na -> XYZ ion exchange resins.


No, I checked with him to make sure. The Na is coming from somewhere naturally I guess.


----------



## Phil Edwards

*Zapins*,

I was teaching in Japan for most of '12 and the first half of this year. Now I'm in Pennsylvania working for Brightwell Aquatics doing R+D, tech and convention support, and other misc. things. I wouldn't doubt that this forum in particular helped you improve your writing and reading comprehension. The more you write the better it gets (unless you write things like Twilight; then it gets worse).

I'm not calling you out about the NO3 thing; that's the original author's issue. Whenever I submitted test results for research or work I had to report it as NO3-N, NH3-N, or NH4-N. Each test has specific chemistry and methods for specific compounds so the authors should be reporting more specifically.

You're headed to med school then?


----------



## Zapins

Oh I know, I was agreeing with you about the N you mentioned and yes the original people should have said what they were testing for.

I'm in Philadelphia at the moment so you aren't too far away (about 50 mins). 

It's good to have you back on the forum, do you have a fish tank setup again? Also, what does your work at Brightwell Aquatics entail? Can we recruit you into our mad scheme of figuring out the aquatic plant problems of our hobby? 

I'm in the process of doing secondaries now for med school, they really aren't fun. Also, I'm waiting for my college adviser to get off his ass and send my letter of recommendation in to each of the schools I am applying to. He has been delaying for over a week now and it is losing me precious time!


----------



## Zapins

By the way I figured out what this weird growth was in my rotala back on page 14.

It is nitrogen deificency. I also took pictures of my other Rotala plants and the symptoms are extremely clear. My nitrates were also 0. So I adde 15 ppm (8.5 grams/90g) and will post updated pictures later to show that it was nitrate. Cavan or someone else can you please check my new thread and confirm the species names of the plants are correct?

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...eficient-pictures-symptoms-rotala-plants.html


----------



## Phil Edwards

Zapins,

Yeah, I've got a tank build going. Check out the 300g Dutch link in my signature.  Of course I'm in on all the hairbrained techy stuff. In fact, I've got a study of my own in the planning and materials gathering stage right now. Once the big tank's going smoothly and I've got the money to get what I need I'll get started on it. 

I'll be at AquaFest next week; if you're going I'll see you there!


----------



## Zapins

Jeffy what do you think of this spectrophotometer?

http://www.orbeco.com/water/products/spectrophotometer-sp600

Our club has some disposable funds and I think if this thing does what it says it does it might be very useful to have around for club meetings. Really bring something unique to our club and help pull in new members and keep attendance up. What do you think? Does it look up to standards? I doubt it is anywhere as good as your machine but is it any good for on the fly measurements for a small club?

Or if you know of anything similar or something better?


----------



## Phil Edwards

How much are they asking for that thing Zap? FYI, reagents are EXPENSIVE(!) and moving that thing around may not be the best idea. They're meant to sit in one place and not move.


----------



## JeffyFunk

Zapins said:


> Jeffy what do you think of this spectrophotometer?
> 
> http://www.orbeco.com/water/products/spectrophotometer-sp600
> 
> Our club has some disposable funds and I think if this thing does what it says it does it might be very useful to have around for club meetings. Really bring something unique to our club and help pull in new members and keep attendance up. What do you think? Does it look up to standards? I doubt it is anywhere as good as your machine but is it any good for on the fly measurements for a small club?
> 
> Or if you know of anything similar or something better?


Personally, i really cannot comment on the quality of the instrument because, frankly, we only use Hach UV-Vis spectrophotometers because they come pre-programmed w/ the most commonly used calibration curves. Usually the main difference between UV-VIS instruments is in the wavelength range. Higher end instruments have a larger range, usually down to 200 nm vs ~350-400 nm. The 200 nm range is useful for a few methods like SM 4500-NO3-N (Second-Derivative UV Spectrophotometric Method) (Proposed in the 21st Edition of SM). In this method, the theory is that Nitrates have a characteristic peak @ ~220 nm & this can be used to measure the nitrate concentration directly. The problem is that UV-VIS instruments with this capability are much more expensive and not really worth it for only one method... (I believe we were looking at $10,000 vs $4,000 for the standard / base model when our own UV-Vis broke earlier this year... )

In any case, here's my personal perspective on laboratory analysis. The instrumentation you have is only ~50% of the problem. Obviously, you need the correct instrumentation to perform any given analysis. *More importantly, IMHO, is the verification of your data and, correspondingly, the verification that you (or your analyst) can perform the analysis correctly.*

So how does one verify one's analysis data? The answer is a quality assurance / quality control (QA/QC) program. One of the easiest parts of a QA/QC programs is the routine analysis of a laboratory control solution (LCS). If you make up a solution @ a given concentration (from your calibration standard, for example), does that solution analyze correctly? The problem, though, is what is involved with making & analyzing a LCS. You need, for example, a certified calibration solution (purchased or made from analytical grade reagents), volumetric glassware & pipettes, cuvettes. If you are making up your calibration solutions from reagents, you need reagent water, reagents & an analytical (or semi-analytical) balance. How do you know if your balance is accurate? You need to verify your balance's accuracy by measuring certified reference weights. All of these checks & balances go into a good laboratory program in order to ensure that the analytical data is as accurate as possible. Now, does everyone **Need** a rigorous QA/QC program? No. For most people, i would think that the analysis of a blank and LCS would be adequate. That said, without any sorts of QA/QC solutions to analyze and verify, how can you be sure your analysis results are correct? How can you tell if there is a problem in your analysis process or instrumentation?

Now, this is not meant to discourage anyone from getting any analytical instruments for their home use but rather to simply make people aware that there is a lot more involved with properly analyzing and verifying analytical results than simply having the instrument and doing the analysis. *Bottom line - There is a lot of additional equipment involved with producing acceptable results and those costs need to also be considered when making any purchases.*

P.S. I got a whole bunch of samples this weekend from Zapins, Cavan & Tim Gross to analyze (including his magic tap water & surface scum). I hope to have those results done & posted before i head out to AquaFest 2013 this Friday...


----------



## Cavan Allen

Update: Algae of all kinds nearly gone. Mostly a big improvement until recently. Fixed up my RO a short time ago and have been using Equilibrium. Also switched to Flourish Nitrogen (noticeable increase in growth for some plants) and Envy in place of Flourish to try to get a handle on organics.

_Staurogyne repens_ has what looks like magnesium deficiency, with darker veins and lighter tissue in between (seen to a somewhat lesser degree with _Suarurus chinensis_). Not really bad, but noticeable. Also just kinda yellowish. Formerly did quite well. Some stunting there too. I see a leaf down curling issue with a few other plants.


----------



## Zapins

Pictures!!

I need more Mg pics, we are running low in the deficiency finder.

Thanks for the detailed explanation Jeffy. The calibration part wouldn't be too hard I have access to several labs near me that I could use to calibrate the equipment. I just had a peek at the price tag on the item I linked and its $3000 new. Much more than I had thought! If the reagents are expensive as well then I'm not sure that would be a good purchase at this point in time even if our club had the cash.

I have seen several spectrophotometers on ebay, second hand but still working. I wonder if any of those would be worth buying. They are certainly more affordable. But I wouldn't know where to buy the reagents from.

Perhaps it is best to leave the testing up to you


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## Cavan Allen

Best I can do it seems. I have no idea how there could be a magnesium deficiency, unless something is blocking it.


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## Zapins

Hmm interesting. Whatever is wrong is not severe enough yet to be easily identifiable. 

Are you using more RO than usual to decrease the zinc? How much Mg are you adding back when you reconstitute?


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## Cavan Allen

It's all RO, and has been. The only difference now is that the RO unit has a new membrane and filters. It's reconstituted with Equilibrium to a KH of 5. Some of it was stunted/bordering on stunted as well, though I'm not sure yet if that's continuing. It formerly looked really good, and I have no idea why that should be happening.


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## AaronT

Cavan Allen said:


> It's all RO, and has been. The only difference now is that the RO unit has a new membrane and filters. It's reconstituted with Equilibrium to a KH of 5. Some of it was stunted/bordering on stunted as well, though I'm not sure yet if that's continuing. It formerly looked really good, and I have no idea why that should be happening.


Equilibrium doesn't reconstitute KH, only GH. Do you mean you are also adding KH?


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## Cavan Allen

AaronT said:


> Equilibrium doesn't reconstitute KH, only GH. Do you mean you are also adding KH?


Yes. I'm using alkaline buffer. Overdid it a tad last time, but KH is about 3.5. I'd rather just use potassium bicarbonate, but I'm afraid of overdosing K if I use that and Equilibrium at the same time.


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## Phil Edwards

Cavan,

Have you considered using a Sodium bicarb-based KH buffer?


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## Cavan Allen

The one I have now is partially sodium based, but I'm wary of adding any more sodium since it can build up and isn't a necessary nutrient.


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## JeffyFunk

Big update ... Just in time to relax and get ready for Aquafest 2013! Here are analysis results for samples from Cavan Allen (CA), Tim Gross (TG), Zapins (MT). For clarity sake, results below my reporting limit of 0.01 ppm in the micro nutrients table will be reported as "<" (less than the detection limit). B results are not available (n/a).



Code:


| Sample               | Al  | B   | Ba  | Co  | Cu  | Fe  | Mn  | Mo  | Ni  | Sr  | V   | Zn  | 

| CA Tank 10/2/13      | 0.06| n/a | 0.03|  <  |  <  | 0.03|  <  | 0.01|  <  | 0.14|  <  | 0.03|
| MT Old Home Tap 10/8 |  <  | n/a |  <  |  <  | 0.01|  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.10|  <  |  <  |
| MT Home Tap 10/8/13  |  <  | n/a | 0.07|  <  | 0.01|  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.06|  <  |  <  |
| MT Apt Tap 10/8/13   |  <  | n/a |  <  |  <  | 0.06|  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.24|  <  | 0.10|
| MT 90g Apt Aq 10/7/13|  <  | n/a | 0.04|  <  | 0.04| 0.14|  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.27|  <  | 0.18|
| MT 90g Home Aq 10/7  |  <  | n/a | 0.05|  <  | 0.26| 0.01| 0.01|  <  |  <  | 0.06| 0.01| 0.03|
| TG Tap 10/12/13      | 0.02| n/a | 0.04|  <  | 0.01|  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.27|  <  | 0.19|
| TG 20g Aq 10/12/13   |  <  | n/a | 0.02|  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.01|  <  | 0.26|  <  | 0.02|
| TG 40g Aq 10/12/13   |  <  | n/a | 0.02|  <  |  <  | 0.03|  <  | 0.01|  <  | 0.25|  <  |  <  |

| Sample               | K   | Ca  | Mg  | Na  | TIC | TOC |Gen. Hard. (dGH) | CO3 Hard. (dKH)| 

| CA Tank 10/2/13      | 33.0| 26.4|  7.1| 19.6| 11.2| 10.6|  95.0 ( 5.3 dGH)| 93.3 ( 5.2 dKH)|
| MT Old Home Tap 10/8 |  1.9| 39.1|  9.2| 28.5| 20.1|  1.5|   136 ( 7.6 dGH)|  168 ( 9.4 dkH)|
| MT Home Tap 10/8/13  | <1.0| 20.2|  7.8|  6.7| 14.9|  1.3|  82.3 ( 4.6 dGH)|  125 ( 7.0 dKH)|
| MT Apt Tap 10/8/13   |  6.7| 58.8| 19.3| 48.0| 22.6|  2.5|   226 (12.7 dGH)|  188 (10.6 dKH)|
| MT 90g Apt Aq 10/7/13| <1.0| 20.0|  7.4|  8.3| 16.5|  4.2|  80.5 ( 4.5 dGH)|  131 ( 7.3 dKH)|
| MT 90g Home Aq 10/7  | 23.2| 54.1| 19.3| 55.4| 15.7|  5.6|   215 (12.0 dGH)|  138 ( 7.7 dKH)|
| TG Tap 10/12/13      |  3.3| 41.3| 11.3| 49.3| 12.7|  1.7|   150 ( 8.4 dGH)|  106 ( 5.9 dKH)|
| TG 20g Aq 10/12/13   | 57.1| 35.3| 10.3| 46.5|  8.9|  1.6|   133 ( 7.5 dGH)| 74.3 ( 4.2 dKH)|
| TG 40g Aq 10/12/13   | 70.1| 39.1| 10.9| 49.3| 11.5|  3.3|   143 ( 8.0 dGH)| 96.2 ( 5.4 dKH)|

All results are in units of mg/L (ppm). Metal analysis results were analyzed by ICP-OES. TIC & TOC analysis results were analyzed by method SM 3510 C - Heated-Persulfate Oxidation. General Hardness & Carbonate Hardness are in units of ppm CaCO3 eq (calculated). Carbonate Hardness (KH) were calculated from TIC, not a titration (so they may not be equivalent... i still have to test them to see). Please note - Limited QA/QC solutions were run on these samples and these analysis results are for personal use only. These results may not be used for regulatory reporting purposes or compliance testing. If anyone else would like their water tested, please feel free to contact me. Thank you.


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## Cavan Allen

Thanks again! Looks like I flushed out that zinc. I think that we can start to get an idea of what an acceptable TOC level is. Look how low Tim's levels are. He told me that he uses carbon in his filters. That or Purigen is no doubt a good idea. Along with regular gravel cleaning. I'd like to put all the results in one graph, or are we doing that in the other thread?


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## Zapins

Amazing, thanks this definitely adds to the picture. I have to run out now but I'll post back my thoughts later tonight.

Looks like my water at the apartment is also naturally quite high in zinc.


----------



## Zapins

Jeffy, did the 180g tank samples make it? You did mention there was water in the bigger packet so I hope the 6th bag didn't lose all its water.

Also, did you manage to get the lead analyzed for the apartment tap and tank water?

I'll add my photos of the 90g tank at home to your other post (the one about organics).

I wonder if the 0.26 copper reading may have something to do with this. My plants just don't grow in that tank anymore. The soil has started to leach out all over the place over time. The copper must be coming out of the soil since I don't fertilize the tank with dry ferts. I haven't really done much with this tank in terms of maintenance. I have it connected to the auto water change system which does small daily doses. I think the soil may just be depleted at this point and useless for plant growth, it has been several years since I set it up.

**Edit**
Oh also, Cavan I think we need to run the "Most Horrific Algae" competition again so I can steal the show.
**Edit**

My 90g home tank when I took the water sample:









Same tank before:


----------



## Zapins

I just noticed that Tim Gross (TG) as 0.19 ppm zinc in his tap water but 0.02 in his tank. What is Tim's user name? Tim if you are reading this are you using RO water or aquasoil in your tanks? Can you tell us about your setup and any problems that might have happened with plant growth?

It seems that CSM+B has added Fe:Zn in a 4:1 ratio (I checked back with my initial results from 2008 and the ratio is the same - post #108 in this thread). So if you add 0.16 Fe you are adding 0.04 ppm Zn. This is a bit concerning for those of us who have high zinc levels to start with.

I'm starting to see weird growth on my Rotalas again even after the nitrogen deficiency was fixed.

While you can't have two deficiencies at the same time (because the limiting nutrient stops growth before the second low concentration nutrient does), but can you have a deficiency and a toxicity at the same time? I'm thinking you can. For example nitrogen deficiency would stop my rotalas from growing at all, but once it was replaced the plants would start growing again but show toxicity symptoms. Your thoughts?

I'm having trouble seeing a pattern with the TIC and TOC values. What do you guys think about it? Also, I haven't been able to find much in the literature concerning TIC and TOC, and idea what terms I can search for instead that might give some background info? I'd like to flesh out the case for an appropriate range.

Also, my 90g apartment tank has had pretty steady BBA growth, even now after nuking it with excel I see it starting to grow and take over again and my TOC value is only 4.2. Your TOC is double that much, do you have BBA in your tank or not really?

We need to add our thoughts and pictures to Jeffy's other thread in order to figure out the correlations between TIC/TOC and algae.

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/algae/89126-organics-analysis.html


----------



## TAB

Zapins said:


> Jeffy, did the 180g tank samples make it? You did mention there was water in the bigger packet so I hope the 6th bag didn't lose all its water.
> 
> Also, did you manage to get the lead analyzed for the apartment tap and tank water?
> 
> I'll add my photos of the 90g tank at home to your other post (the one about organics).
> 
> I wonder if the 0.26 copper reading may have something to do with this. My plants just don't grow in that tank anymore. The soil has started to leach out all over the place over time. The copper must be coming out of the soil since I don't fertilize the tank with dry ferts. I haven't really done much with this tank in terms of maintenance. I have it connected to the auto water change system which does small daily doses. I think the soil may just be depleted at this point and useless for plant growth, it has been several years since I set it up.
> 
> **Edit**
> Oh also, Cavan I think we need to run the "Most Horrific Algae" competition again so I can steal the show.
> **Edit**
> 
> My 90g home tank when I took the water sample:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Same tank before:


what was the time frame in all of this?


----------



## madmax

Zapins said:


> I just noticed that Tim Gross (TG) as 0.19 ppm zinc in his tap water but 0.02 in his tank. What is Tim's user name? Tim if you are reading this are you using RO water or aquasoil in your tanks? Can you tell us about your setup and any problems that might have happened with plant growth?


Hey Zapins. Here's some info:

All water I use is straight from the tap
Tank is 40BR
Substrate is SMS
Lighting is via PCs giving 100 par reading at the surface
50% water changes weekly using straight tap water
Substrate cleaning with gravel vac once or twice a year (Usually ends up being 75% to 80% W.C.)
Filter cleaning/ new carbon monthly
Plant mass dense to extremely dense

Daily fertilizing regimen is as follows:
9ml KNO3 (1ml of my solution should give ~1ppm NO3/20gal, .63ppm K/20gal)
9ml K2SO4 (1ml of my solution should give ~.5ppm K/20 gal)
3ml KH2PO4 (1 ml of my solution should give ~1ppm P/ 20 gal, .41ppm K/20 gal)
12ml Seachem Flourish
15ml Seachem Flourish Iron
6ml Seachem Excel
pressurized CO2 ~ 1 or 2 bubbles per second. Solenoid on and off with lights.

I've been running this tank for about six or seven years now with no algae problems, and very few stunting issues. I've grown a vast array of species in it with good results (its a farm). I hope that helps. Any other questions, feel free to ask.

Thanks,

Tim Gross


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## Zapins

Soil put in on May 26 2009.
Nice tank picture taken on May 18th 2010
Ugly tank picture taken Oct 7th 2013
Soil age: 4 years, 4 months, 11 days

Tim can you post pics of your tanks?

What I don't understand is where is all the zinc in your tap water going once it gets into your tank? In my tank and in Cavan's the zinc level does not drop in the tank itself so we know our plants aren't using it up.

Is the SMS absorbing it or is your carbon filter absorbing it? I don't think Cavan uses carbon, and I certainly don't.

Actually come to think of it, I used to use carbon quite heavily when I first started my planted tanks back in my old house where the water was "magical," and I could grow anything without trying. I wonder if the carbon in my filter had anything to do with absorbing excess nutrients/organics giving me a safety zone and preventing toxicities? Carbon does have a very high CEC value right?

For years I have been under the impression that most planted tank users don't use carbon in their filters since the plants do a similar job. Maybe carbon does have a place in planted tanks to protect them vs. overdoses of micros?

Jeffy do you think we can test this theory out? I can mix up a batch of tank water with a known but large dose of micros, then split it in half and in one container add a filter with carbon in it and the other just a filter with no carbon. We can then see what micros are absorbed by the carbon and see if it has any effect on micro concentrations. I think I'll make samples with a fairly concentrated micro mix so we can see if any of the other micros are affected by carbon or just zinc.


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## Cavan Allen

I think I'll definitely be using carbon and/or Purigen. Maybe that OrgantR that Brightwell makes. Something to get the organics in line. Plant growth is pretty dense, and it isn't always possible to get back to all those places. Amano uses carbon, does he not? It's certainly only ONLY an organics issue, but I think that's a major part of it. 

Exactly how much carbon do you use Tim?


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## Zapins

Just dug up some info on carbon and its ability to absorb metal ions. Basically yes it can, this paper is from a study on using peanut shell waste to make activated charcoal, but they also test a few commercial versions. It seems that that carbon can absorb a pretty large amount of each metal. They show mmol of metal ion absorbed per gram of carbon added.










*From:*​Kermit Wilson, et al
Select metal adsorption by activated carbon made from peanut shells, 
Bioresource Technology, Volume 97, Issue 18, December 2006, Pages 2266-2270, ISSN 0960-8524, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2005.10.043.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960852405005225)​
Now my question is, given this information about carbon's ability to absorb micros and the confirming values from Tim's tanks (from 0.18 to less than 0.01 ppm in the water column) how is it that we don't see weird micro nutrient deficiencies in tanks that use carbon? Wouldn't it stand to reason that you'd see these deficiencies if the concentrations in the tank were basically 0 due to the carbon?

I wonder if the reason has to do with the fact that plants are able to store some amount of nutrients in reserve combined with the fact that micro nutrients are needed in tiny amounts. Perhaps plants are able to grow using their reserves between applications of weekly fertilizer doses, and then stock up quickly when the concentration rises the day of the fertilizer dose before the carbon removes it all from the water? Or perhaps our aquatic plants just need such tiny amounts of these micros that it is virtually impossible to remove them totally from the water column, sort of like the Nickel story we discussed earlier.


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## Cavan Allen

Well, he is using a heck of a lot of Flourish.

Found this in an ADA catalog: 


> An algae outbreak often occurs as a result of excess organic matter in water due to a poorly functioning biological filter. Temporarily placing a part of the filter media with activated carbon is a good way to reduce the load on the biological filter and remove the organic materials that cause algae to develop.


Temporarily? Well, Tim seems to do OK with it in there all the time. Anyway, one of the filtration media designed specifically for organic removal would probably do the same job. It would be interesting to see the difference in TOC before and after adding one of the above.


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## Zapins

I don't understand, so does ADA use carbon always or just sometimes in a pinch?

Wow that is a huge amount unless he meant to type 1.2 mL / day and 1.5 mL/day. I'm betting it was a typo since you don't see insanely high iron levels, only 0.03 ppm in his one tank.

The weekly recommended dose for Trace is:
"Use 1 capful (5 mL) for every 80 L (20 gallons*) twice a week."

For Iron:
"Use 1 capful (5 mL) for each 200 L (50 gallons*) or as required to maintain about 0.10 mg/L iron."

Also, another interesting thing I just noticed, the trace mix does not have Iron in it at all. This makes a lot of sense to me since you can more easily get toxicities if you dose traces to get high iron levels.

Boron (B) 0.0028%
Cobalt (Co) 0.00003%
Copper (Cu) 0.0032%
Manganese (Mn) 0.0085%
Molybdenum (Mo) 0.0003%
Zinc (Zn) 0.0169%
Rubidium (Rh) 0.000008%
Nickel (Ni) 0.000003%
Vanadium (V) 0.000002%


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## Cavan Allen

It's not a typo. Those recommended levels are VERY conservative. 5ml of Flourish is NOT enough in my tank. 7ml minimum daily. I've been using Envy in an effort to lower organics, but I think if I keep up with the weekly 50% changes and use some sort of carbon/organic scavenging resin, that should do the same job. I'll be curious to see if going back to Flourish helps the Staurogyne. Most things look pretty damn good now, but that looks like ****.


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## AaronT

Tim - do you mean 100 PAR at the substrate level? 100 PAR would be pretty low at the substrate level. 

Interesting stuff on the organics levels!


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## AquaBarren

100 PAR at the substrate is low?


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## BruceF

Seems the surface and the substrate are hard to keep straight!

This is a great thread. 

Daily dosing of excel has to be helpful here. I cant believe we might all be using carbon again.


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## JeffyFunk

Some random thoughts...

When i was at Tim's Home looking at his aquariums, he has some really lush growth with no algae anywhere (or at least it's hidden pretty well under the surface scum... lol) - He had some gorgeous Lagenandra thwaitesii with not a spot of BBA (mine is a BBA magnet). I brought my PAR meter w/ me that I bought from Hoppy @ TPT. For the 40 breeder, he had 2 compact fluorescent (which are changed @ the end of the year - so they were starting to fade as evidenced by the black marks near the end) and 3 spiral CFL's in the middle. It was definitely a light fixture only a DIY person could love... lol. The PAR at the SUBSTRATE was only around 50 PAR. It wasn't as high as I thought so a PAR of 100 at the SURFACE is about right. The thing is that the plants looked fine. The Cabomba furcata was nice and pink / red and the Ludwigia sphaerocarpa looked nice and red - not flat on the substrate, but not leggy either. Both of those plants like higher light.

About the [Fe] analysis. I think a big part of Fe analysis is dependent upon what Fe species you dose. Amano (and probably Tom Barr as well) has commented that Fe is inherently unstable in the water column and will be absorbed rapidly, in a matter of hours. Tim doses' Seachem Fe, so he doses the Fe chelated w/ gluconate, while i dose CSM+B with the Fe EDTA. I have found that I typically record much higher concentrations of Fe in my aquarium water (I've observed up to ~1.2 ppm). Point of the story - an ICP analysis of Fe is not indicative of Fe deficiencies in your tank - you have to look at your plants.

About Activated Carbon. Amano recommends you use Activated carbon (I believe he sells a bamboo charcoal... probably harvested from virgin bamboo forests w/ ADA scissors force under the full moon light so it's blessed by the moon goddess... ) in the beginning of your aquarium as that helps with the initial ammonia release of aqua soil, as well as helps keep the water cleaner while the biological media establishes. After 6 months, he typically replaces all of the media in his canister filters w/ Bio Rio. Personally, I find that my tap water is crappy and the use of activated carbon helps a lot. Can it remove trace metals? Probably, but so can the plants. Unless you're seeing a specific deficiency, I don't think activated carbon is a problem... Also, although Zapin's has found a nice paper showing that activated carbon is capable of absorbing things, does the paper have anything to say about the rate of absorption? In other words, what will absorb nutrients faster? activated carbon or a hungry plant?


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## JeffyFunk

Zapins said:


> For years I have been under the impression that most planted tank users don't use carbon in their filters since the plants do a similar job. Maybe carbon does have a place in planted tanks to protect them vs. overdoses of micros?
> 
> Jeffy do you think we can test this theory out? I can mix up a batch of tank water with a known but large dose of micros, then split it in half and in one container add a filter with carbon in it and the other just a filter with no carbon. We can then see what micros are absorbed by the carbon and see if it has any effect on micro concentrations. I think I'll make samples with a fairly concentrated micro mix so we can see if any of the other micros are affected by carbon or just zinc.


If the experiment is designed properly, i don't see why i couldn't work. I think you will need some water movement in your tanks, however as the ability of activated carbon to absorb substances is dependent upon there being contact between the active sites and the substance being absorbed... don't you think stagnant water would result in a 'void' zone around the activated carbon where it's absorbed all the nutrients around it? You would also want a frequent sampling frequency as Fe can be absorbed or precipitate out quickly.

Another random thought... I remember reading in 'Ecology of the planted aquarium' that D. Walstad states that DOC helps to protect plants from metal toxicity by chelating to them... That's all.


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## Zapins

I read over the paper again and the way they exposed the metal ion solutions to the carbon was by taking 0.3 grams of each activated charcoal and putting it in a seperate 80 ml beaker, then 30 ml of a metal ion solution was added to each (at 20 mM concentration). The mixture was stirred at 300 rpm for 24 hr using a multiple stirrer. Aliquots were removed, filtered and then tested with ICP and a model SPS-5 auto sampler.

I am quite certain the activated charcoal has a faster rate of absorbance than plants. I've seen people take a solution of methylene blue and pour it through a 1 foot cylinder of activated charcoal and the water comes out the other side as pure water with not a drop of methylene blue in it. Granted I think methylene blue is one of the fastest absorbed substances but still, it only takes a few seconds to be bound up. This is why I don't understand exactly how plants don't develop deficiencies in carbon tanks.

On top of that look at Cavan's old results and my apartment results, we have high initial zinc. If plants had been able to use that much zinc they would have reduced the levels quite a lot in the tank water even after the addition of more zinc with CSM+B. If you look at Tim's tap and tank water his tap water has a similar high level of zinc in his tap water but basically 0 in the tank. Granted he uses a different brand of fertilizer but that fertilizer still adds zinc as the same chemical it is not chelated. I think the only significant difference between our three tanks is the carbon in the filter.



Code:


| Sample               | Al  | B   | Ba  | Co  | Cu  | Fe  | Mn  | Mo  | Ni  | Sr  | V   |[B] Zn  [/B]| 

[B]No carbon used[/B]
| CA Tap 9/2013        | 0.03| n/a | 0.04|  <  | 0.04|  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.23|  <  | [B]0.12[/B]|
| CA Tank 9/12/13      |  <  | n/a | 0.04|  <  |  <  | 0.04|  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.17|  <  | [B]0.27[/B]|
| MT Apt Tap 10/8/13   |  <  | n/a |  <  |  <  | 0.06|  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.24|  <  | [B]0.10[/B]|
| MT 90g Apt Aq 10/7/13|  <  | n/a | 0.04|  <  | 0.04| 0.14|  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.27|  <  | [B]0.18[/B]|

| TG Tap 10/12/13      | 0.02| n/a | 0.04|  <  | 0.01|  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.27|  <  | [B]0.19[/B]|
[B]Carbon used[/B]
| TG 20g Aq 10/12/13   |  <  | n/a | 0.02|  <  |  <  |  <  |  <  | 0.01|  <  | 0.26|  <  |[B] 0.02[/B]|
| TG 40g Aq 10/12/13   |  <  | n/a | 0.02|  <  |  <  | 0.03|  <  | 0.01|  <  | 0.25|  <  | [B] <  [/B]|

As for the micro experiment I think the effect on iron might be detectable, but iron seems pretty hard to get a reliable reading from - as you say it depends on the form it is used in. I think it would be more interesting to see the effects on the micro nutrients. Does carbon scrub the water totally of micros, or leave a small amount behind? I think we'd have to use CSM+B to have any chance at seeing carbon's effects on iron levels. Look at the results above, Cavan and Tim don't use CSM+B and their iron levels are not really detectable. I highly doubt that the above iron concentrations are a true measure of the iron floating about in their water. I think it is much more likely that the gluconated iron they use is not detectable by the machine as well. My iron is added using CSM+B and seems to be more easily detected by the machine.

Maybe carbon binds micros up totally, but then over time as it binds other things like organics it releases some of the micros in a trade situation. Maybe this explains why plants don't become deficient?

A lot of different possibilities.


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## Phil Edwards

Carbon will adsorb any material with an appropriate charge; be it traces, organics, small children, whatever. The thing with activated carbon is contact time and the surface area of the granules. A filter with a lot of throughflow won't get the kind of adsorption that one with a slower throughflow will get, surface area and other things being equal. Also, AC tends to lose effectiveness VERY quickly, all things considered. A typical amount of AC in a typical tank has an effective life of two weeks. After that it's pretty much used up and may eventually start releasing materials. In planted tanks that either A: get nutrient supplementation, B: have a high organic load, C: get filled with high TDS tap water, or D: all of the above, the AC will be useless PDQ. Unless it's exchanged every couple weeks it becomes a really nice biomedia.


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## Zapins

I've often wondered about the lifespan of Activated Charcoal (AC). I always thought it would be quite fast as well, but after seeing Tim's results I wonder if in a normal tank it will last at least a month.

Tim how long ago did you last change your carbon? How many days ago?

Carbon is negatively charged so it should absorb positive cations over negative ones. As for absorbing organics it certainly looks like it does given Tim's low TOC values compared with the rest of us, but it hasn't dropped those to 0 so it doesn't look like AC absorbs every type of organic 100%.

I think I'd like to add some carbon to my canister filter and see if it drops the zinc levels in 2 weeks.


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## Yo-han

Zapins said:


> I've often wondered about the lifespan of Activated Charcoal (AC). I always thought it would be quite fast as well, but after seeing Tim's results I wonder if in a normal tank it will last at least a month.
> 
> Tim how long ago did you last change your carbon? How many days ago?
> 
> Carbon is negatively charged so it should absorb positive cations over negative ones. As for absorbing organics it certainly looks like it does given Tim's low TOC values compared with the rest of us, but it hasn't dropped those to 0 so it doesn't look like AC absorbs every type of organic 100%.
> 
> I think I'd like to add some carbon to my canister filter and see if it drops the zinc levels in 2 weeks.


A researcher at Cabot Norit once told my colleague it lasts about a week tops. It certainly does not adsorb every positively charged ion:









As you can see, most of the stuff we want in the aquarium are on the right side. Even ammonia is, because it is not adsorbed ammonia from the water. Like purigen it is adsorbing the organic substances which are otherwise converted to ammonia.

If you selectively want to adsorb organics from the water, purigen is a very good alternative. I guess TOC will drop quite a bit.


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## madmax

Hey everybody. I'll try and answer all the questions, but first let me say that I only started using carbon about a year ago. Now remember, the tank has been up for nearly seven. I started using it because my water would get so yellow (obviously organics) and I would be forced to do more than a 50% WC which I don't like to do because I'm afraid it will stress the fauna. Although I initially had green spot when I set it up, it subsided within a couple months and I haven't had any problems since. Also, when I first set it up, I kept a daily log of what nutrients I would add and quantity. I tested frequently with LaMotte Test Kits (not the greatest, but much better than API test kits). I would test P,N,Fe, and KH. Those results helped me set the fertilizing regimen that I currently use today (slight modifications here and there mostly for ease of use). So what I'm saying is that although there is no doubt that high organics are part of the problem I think there is more to the puzzle. Although it is a great start.


Aaron, as Jeff stated 100par at the surface is correct. I know it seems low, but I've always had good results. I was surprised to hear it. Maybe the meter needs calibrated?

Zapins, the numbers for my ferts are correct. Like I said, it's basically what I've always added. Even before I started using carbon. Also, the water sample that Jeff tested was taken an hour before I did my weekly water change, and it also just happened to be the day that I would be cleaning my filter and replacing my carbon. So I would have bet that my organics would have been much higher. Very surprising.

Jeff, I don't have surface scum :tongue1: and yes my DIY light is very ugly

Cavan I use API activated carbon. It's a 22oz container and I use between 1/3 and 1/4 of the container every time I change the carbon.


I hope I got all the questions. I'll look through and see if I missed anything after school. I'll also try and get a pic of my tank up before I head off to Aquafest this weekend. 

Later,

Tim Gross


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## Zapins

Yo-han that graph is invaluable. Can you post the citation of where that comes from? I'd like to look it up and read the study that posted that. The study I found definitely shows carbon can absorb zinc and copper as well as other things, so the graph you posted with "low" absorbance probably just means in comparison with the other things on the left it doesn't absorb huge amounts, not that it doesn't absorb anything. 

Also about the duration, what conditions did that researcher use it in or for? In polluted water I'd imagine it would last less time than in our tanks. Though maybe not. Tim said he was at the end of the month when he sent in the water samples.

Interesting info Tim.

It is difficult to figure out exactly what happened before you started using carbon or before we took measurements for that matter. I'd also bet that water tends to change composition over the course of a year depending on the amount of rain and the temperature etc... Perhaps you didn't have high zinc levels before or perhaps you did and they were being reduced in other ways.

I think at this point we need more data, particularly with high zinc levels and carbon, or just carbon in general.

How often do you do water changes and what % now?


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## Cavan Allen

madmax said:


> So what I'm saying is that although there is no doubt that high organics are part of the problem I think there is more to the puzzle. Although it is a great start.


Agree. I think it's a combination of sub par plant health and high organics.



madmax said:


> Aaron, as Jeff stated 100par at the surface is correct. I know it seems low, but I've always had good results. I was surprised to hear it. Maybe the meter needs calibrated?


Possibly. I will say that your sphaerocarpa is a bit orange but grows pretty much vertically and your _L inclinata_ var. _inclinata_ (an uncompromising light hog) is barely hanging on. I'm surprised that the _C. furcata_ looked so good under that light level. You can get away with less light that you'd think for a lot of plants, but not all of them.



madmax said:


> Tim 'Surface Scum' Gross


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## madmax

Quote:
Originally Posted by madmax 
Tim 'Surface Scum' Gross

Lol, good thing this post isn't on Plantedtank. There could be enough people reading it to actually start that rumor


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## Cavan Allen

Can we move some of these toxicity/deficiency articles to a different thread perhaps? I think my thread has gotten a bit cluttered...


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## Cavan Allen

As of today, pretty much all the algae is gone, save for a tiny bit of BBA on my _Isoetes flaccida_ (the best BBA substrate EVER). Glass is clean, nearly all BBA has vanished. Most plants doing fine. Some minor issues with _Bacopa innominata_ (think I may finally have it), but when that stuff does grow, it GROWS. Before the very short life of my pH probe ended (replacement coming), the pH at the end of the day was barely above 6.1. Whoa! That's a tad below ideal. I think I may need a more accurate means of KH testing. Perhaps one of those meters. Can't be sending samples to Jeffy all the time, though I will have some this week. Some bad pics:



















Double canister. Yes, double canister.


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## Zapins

Wow nice tank Cavan! I don't think I've ever seen pics of your tanks before.

I'll consolidate and move the info threads out as soon as the Deficiency forum is up and running. I think that would be the best place for them.

What is the purple plant with the X shaped leaves just to the right of the center in pic 1?

Good idea with the plastic tub in the last picture around your filter - I've never trusted canister filters either!!


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## Cavan Allen

Zapins said:


> Wow nice tank Cavan! I don't think I've ever seen pics of your tanks before.
> 
> I'll consolidate and move the info threads out as soon as the Deficiency forum is up and running. I think that would be the best place for them.


Working on it. For now, Plant Physiology and Emersed Culture might be a good place.



Zapins said:


> What is the purple plant with the X shaped leaves just to the right of the center in pic 1?


http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...ils.php?id=254&category=genus&spec=Hygrophila


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## AaronT

Lookin' good buddy.


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## Zapins

Cavan, how much CSM+B were you adding per week when we measured your results here: http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/fertilizing/88403-trouble-farm-help-11.html#post661022

?


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## Phil Edwards

That's looking great Cavan! Glad to see things have turned around for you.


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