You can see the old leaves as very blue ish. Recently swapped to apt complete levels and got a lot more purple leaves.
Excuse the holes, I think the change in nutrient levels (from Estimative index) caused it to lose some lower leaves.
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Do buce experience nitrate limitation color change?
- Thread starter snowballs99
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You can see the old leaves as very blue ish. Recently swapped to apt complete levels and got a lot more purple leaves.
Excuse the holes, I think the change in nutrient levels (from Estimative index) caused it to lose some lower leaves.
Those old leaves arent happy, otherwise snails/shrimp couldnt damage them like that. Most buces can display a few different colors at one time, especially new leaves. A change in ferts is likely to cause a change in colors, but whether its a good thing or not you'll have to wait and see if the plant can support its existing leaves as they mature and get older. If not the plant will reabsorb its older leaves to fuel new growth. It appears thats whats happening
Even the newest leaf that is fully developed isnt healthy, its already showing a pinhole or two, and those abnormally bright red "spots" is not a sign of good health. If that is inert substrate, epiphytes such as buces or anubias are going to need more ferts than any other plants. Seems like itd be the other way around but its not. Agian Im speaking of inert substrate
The problems with that buce in the pic isnt necessarily fert related, but at a glance I would say it is not a plant that needs ferts reduced. If anything it needs more
Even the newest leaf that is fully developed isnt healthy, its already showing a pinhole or two, and those abnormally bright red "spots" is not a sign of good health. If that is inert substrate, epiphytes such as buces or anubias are going to need more ferts than any other plants. Seems like itd be the other way around but its not. Agian Im speaking of inert substrate
The problems with that buce in the pic isnt necessarily fert related, but at a glance I would say it is not a plant that needs ferts reduced. If anything it needs more
I find the newest leaves usually have the brightest color and then darken as they mature. But as already indicated, that buce is unhappy.
I find that buces always put out leaves that "mature" into a different color over time. Every buce I've owned throws out some kind of lighter/reddish leaf, that darkens and eventually looks like the others.
edit: I missed @Mr.Shenanagins post but I'm echoing what he said!
edit: I missed @Mr.Shenanagins post but I'm echoing what he said!
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- Thread starter
- #5
Hmm fair.
I always have buces melt back a bit whenever I swap to lean dosing tho.
Its currently planted in old aquasoil, probably not too rich either.
I can always swap back to EI as I have the salts.
My bottle of APT 3 just arrived tho and I'd like to test the tank for a month with that.
If it doesn't improve anything then it's back to 30ppm nitrates front loading.
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- #7
Yup. I appreciate the straight forwardness.
I have rotala wallichi in the same tank converting over well so I didn't assume nitrogen deficiency.
Im not sure personally if nitrate is the main issue. Both are planted into the substrate.
Testing nitrates in a nitrate limiting dosing is kinda pointless so I'm left to guess for a bit.
Did the new leaf develop after the change in fertilizer dosing or had it already sprouted ? If not it might be worth just trimming it off and waiting to see if the Buce would adapt to a new baseline.
Its funny to me, and always seemed backwards, but epihpytes in a high energy tank are always the first ones to show a macro deficiency. I mean when attached to hardscape or with inert/old sub. I realize yours are planted in the sub. But to my point, even with relatively high macros in the water, fast growing stems all doing wonderful, slow growing anubias and buces will be quick to look bad if macros arent high enough for them
Slow growers are also slow eaters. Like a pack of lions over a fresh kill, the slow and the weak eat last. Its primarily related to how plants naturally strive for an internal ionic balance, with slight lean to the neg. A lot of this is passive absorption and depends on the presence of pos and neg charges inside the plant vs outside in the water
Its why Ca needs typically to be in the 30s (for example) when plants only take up maybe a couple ppm per week at most. But everybody knows you cant run a high energy tank with 2 ppm Ca in the water. A crude way to put it is there has to be 30 in the water to exert enough "pressure" for plants to be able to absorb the 1 or 2 they need. The presence of N/P/K and also Mg are all relative to this process and influence what happens inside the plant, beyond what the plants actually use
Thats why even though buces and anubias likely use less than other fast growing plants, they need a certain level in the water to be able to get what they need
Could you elaborate a little more on the why of this? Especially when you refer to the “pressure” of having enough of a nutrient to encourage absorption?
Ions across any membrane will try to reach a stable equivalent concentration over time ("concentration gradient" image on the left):
It gets more complicated when it's not only gradients, but also involves charges:
Plants want a slightly negative ionic balance because it helps drive their nutrient transport. This creates an electrical pull that attracts positively charged ions to move into the cell. Plants need this because they evolved the ability to quite easily absorb negatively-charged ions, but need more energy to move cations.
See the chart above for anions; recognize anything? NO3, PO4, two hugely important macros. In fact, NO3 is THE most important/consumed macro by far.
By creating this negative potential, plants can actively pump necessary nutrients across the membrane, even when the concentration of those nutrients is higher inside the cell than outside.
By having a gradient across their membrane that causes a charge differential, they are able to access the cations that are a bit more difficult for them to inherently absorb, like K, Ca, Mg, Fe.
To answer the "Why":
Plants have to spend extra energy to absorb cations compared to absorbing anions. If you provide a large concentration of cations (Ca, Mg, K, Fe) in the water, that gradient difference helps "push" ions across the cell membrane, and makes absorption easier (left image above).
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Rocco explained it. "Pressure" is just a figurative term I used to illustrate the pushing/pulling action between whats inside the plant vs outside. Not that its literally to do with actual pressure. Thats why I prefaced with "a crude way to put it would be..." But I can see how that would be confusing lol
Haha I should have explained myself better, I meant the process as has been explained and how the ratios mattered.
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- #15
That actually makes a lot of sense. This is probably why my ephyphites and
ah that makes a lot of sense.
I just remembered i am also doing lean GH, like 2-3.
I'll bump gh back up to 8-10 and hopefully see some improvements.
I run my tanks at ~27ppm Ca by adding 20ppm after WC each week with 70% WC:
And do the same for Mg, which hovers likely between 5-6.5ppm Mg:
27ppm Ca and ~5.5ppm Mg is about 5dGH.
I also dose ~15ppm K with the CaSO4 and MgSO4 after WC each week. K doesn't affect GH.
Just letting you know that you might not need to go all the way to GH8-10, which is just adding more Ca and Mg.
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- #17
I have like 5 10 gallon tanks, so I prefer to dose higher and do a water change every 2 weeks instead.
Some nitrate color changes here!
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- #19
Update:
A did a water change for one of my tanks and noticed one of my smallest buces started fragmenting after growing fine for months.
The body went soft as if its trying to split and dislodge itself to flow into a differen't area.
This clump has grown fine in 20 par and way worse conditions in the past, so I'm fairly sure I have a nutrient issue here.
I'm going to go back to much higher macros for now.
The only tank that has done well on lean dosing is the one with fresh aquasoil, APT FEAST one. Seems after soil exhausts your better off dosing higher macros for buces.
A did a water change for one of my tanks and noticed one of my smallest buces started fragmenting after growing fine for months.
The body went soft as if its trying to split and dislodge itself to flow into a differen't area.
This clump has grown fine in 20 par and way worse conditions in the past, so I'm fairly sure I have a nutrient issue here.
I'm going to go back to much higher macros for now.
The only tank that has done well on lean dosing is the one with fresh aquasoil, APT FEAST one. Seems after soil exhausts your better off dosing higher macros for buces.
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