# Help with Vallisneria



## Teut (Mar 23, 2006)

Hi,

I have a Rio 180L Planted Discus tank with Dennerle Duomat under gravel heater and Co2 Injection along with Pinpoint Ph meter. The light is 2 30W Special Plant tubes from Dennerle. I set this tank up in Jan this year after having got interested in growing aquatic plants from seeing some fantastic aquariums which really capture the imagination. I had some moderate success with my previous tank which was a 90L tank but no undergravel heater .

I tryed to gather as much information as I could from magazines, general aquarium books etc but never seemed to get the aquarium plants to grow perfectly. I recently came accross this website searching for more detailed information and found lots of answers.

I recently started implementing some changes and brought my water parameters to these figures:UsingHagen Test Kits)

GH = 11 dGH Temp = 28.5 Elec/ Controller
KH = 5.0 dKH
PH = 6.75
CO2 = 25-30 mg/L
PO4 = 0.5 mg/L
Fe3+ = 0.25 mg/L
No3 = 12.5 mg/L

Within days the aquarium sprung into life and the plants were growing and the hair algae that was affecting the top leaves on the JavaFern, and Anubias Barteri gradually dissapeared. The E. tenellus started spreading accross the substrate.. This was quite interesting to see how important it is to have the correct water parameters in place.

I now started to dose Saechem Flourish, Potassium, and occasionally N and P.
as some plants were showing deficiencies due to the increased rate of growth with all plants improving except the Vallisneria, the edges are brown and going yellow almost see through and not really growing although sending out pleanty of runners. 
Can anybody help me to identify the problems?

Another question I have is regarding the Plants Pearling. 
Recently I carried out a water change whilst bringing the water parameters to the above measurements and within 3 hours all plants were pearling, I have not been able to get them to do it since. WHY ? im not quite sure.
I would like to get them to pearl again. Any help here would also be greatly appreciated.

(More Info)
I carry out regular water changes at least 20L Change/ week, 
I also replace the water with RO water mixed with Tropical Marin Re-mineralising powder.
Tank contains 5 small discus, 3 flying foxes, pair of Kribs, 4 Corrys, 5 black phanton tetras and 3 ottos algae eaters.


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## hoppycalif (Apr 7, 2005)

As I see it you have less than 1.5 watts per gallon, and that just isn't enough for rapid plant growth. You are fertilizing as if you had much more light, which probably won't hurt anything, but until you can get well over 2 watts per gallon I doubt that you will see much pearling, if any. What you saw at the water change was probably caused by the new water being saturated with oxygen from the tap. Can you get another 30 watts of light on the tank?


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## Teut (Mar 23, 2006)

I agree with what your saying, but the plants were definatly pearling because there were a stream of bubbles being released from hygophilia and also heteranthera. The water used is RO water. I was surprised because it happened within two days of bringing the water parameters to that level. 

This may also answer some questions...... It happened when I added RO water mixed with Remineralising powder.... something I never did before... I previously used liquid additives to get the correct GH and KH but came to the conclusion that they lacked certain minerals. The pearling continued for about two days and then gradually stopped...

During the two days I continued adding Saechem Flourish about 15 drops/day. and the same with N and P.

I asked myself the question were the water parameters just perfect on those days and have I now added to many nutrients in the excitement and thereby putting things out of balance.?


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