# stem plants not growing like they are from the store.



## Jorge_Burrito (Nov 10, 2010)

A lot of stems are grown emersed in the nurseries and go through a pretty big transition when they enter into their submersed form in our home aquariums. This is probably at least partially what is going on here. You are using pressurized CO2 with that setup, right?


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## supplice (May 3, 2012)

I know that this specific plant has been at the store for more than a month so I know it has been submersed for a while. They look great at the store also, just turn really ugly in my tank. 

The only thing I do is use excel every other day with my trace elements and run my lights 7 hours a day. The whole Co2 thing scares me and my wallet.


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## Jorge_Burrito (Nov 10, 2010)

You have way too much light for not running CO2. This is part of the reason your stems are growing thin. Excel helps, but it is not nearly enough for the amount of light you are running. The light is making them want to grow tall and strong, but they have no carbon to do it. This will eventually lead to horrible algae as well. Remove one of your fixtures and try just running off two bulbs, it should help some.


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## slavecorps (Jul 7, 2009)

CO2 would probably help because the plants may not be able to utilize the nutrients without it. What kind of substrate are you using? pH? You have a lot of light over the tank so it could be possible that the stem plants are not able to use nutrients because of lack of CO2 yet they are being driven to grow by the intense lighting causing poor growth and die off.


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## Pen3 (Jan 2, 2007)

even with co2 he lacks nutrients.


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## supplice (May 3, 2012)

Jorge_Burrito said:


> You have way too much light for not running CO2. This is part of the reason your stems are growing thin. Excel helps, but it is not nearly enough for the amount of light you are running. The light is making them want to grow tall and strong, but they have no carbon to do it. This will eventually lead to horrible algae as well. Remove one of your fixtures and try just running off two bulbs, it should help some.


Thanks I took out one of the roseate bulbs from one of the fixtures and now running 2 6500k bulbs set to 8 hours. 

was going off advice from my other thread at:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/lighting/175095-45-gallon-too-intense-lighting-causing.html



slavecorps said:


> CO2 What kind of substrate are you using? pH?


Bottom layer is fluval stratum, mid layer is eco complete and top layer is black gravel. I feel like i have to change my substrate completely because it doesnt look as natural as I want it to be. Also the nutrients from my substrate have probably been sucked dry because I gravel vacced my tank wrong (digging into the substrate instead of a light surface vac). Using oscmocote+ tabs now for all my plants. My PH is a little bit on the higher side, maybe around 7.5-8 but I can lower it with the peat moss I have.




Pen3 said:


> even with co2 he lacks nutrients.


I have been dosing accordingly,
1/2 tsp KNO3 3x a week
1/8 tsp KH2PO4 3x a week
1/8 tsp K2SO4 3x a week
1/8 tsp (10 ml) traces 3x a week
2 ml Flourish Iron 3x a week
Cap full of of excel 3x a week.

moved on to a lower dosage of 1/4 and 1/16 after the first 2 weeks.

Is this not enough nutrients? What am I lacking?

Also my Phosphates shot up to over 10 ppm, is this because of dosing? I did get the water tested a few hours after I dosed it with potassium phosphate, cant think of any other reason except for some new rocks added to my tank.


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## Gplus (Apr 2, 2012)

I had the same problem with this plant! The owner at the LFS said that the Nursery they get them from grows them outside. The natural sunlight is strong enough to promote the deep redish/purple you liked. They might turn red when they get towards the surface. Also, the leaves on my plant started bigger like yours but started to grow smaller more slender leaves. I attached a picture. The plant in question is the one behind the camera friendly Bolivian:icon_lol:. You can just see the original red growth at the bottom. Not much lived. The plant melted back and started new.The new growth has somewhat of a red tinge to it. I think it just needs time to adjust to your water.


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## Jorge_Burrito (Nov 10, 2010)

In that previous thread I noticed others made the assumption that I did that you were running pressurized CO2. Plants needs carbon (via CO2 is best), light, and fertilizers. But these things must be in balance, if you have too much of one of these things without enough of the others to support it you will end up with poor growth and algae problems. While your light and ferts are sufficient, you lack the carbon to support the light levels you were running at. By removing half your lights you should see healthier growth, although it will be slow. If you wanted faster healthier growth you would need to get a CO2 system going and then you could go back and add your second fixture again. Continue to dose your ferts and excel, but you will probably be OK staying towards the low end of EI dosing.

Speaking of excel, that is another possibility here, some plants react poorly to excel and it causes them to wilt. Whilke I don't think ludwigias have that issue, you might try doing a forum search to see if anyone else had problems with excel and ludwigia peruensis.


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## Fishies_in_Philly (Dec 8, 2011)

i don't thik that is a ludwigia sp. it looks more like an alternanthera sp. maybe 'rosefolia'. the stem growth structure in 1 leaf alternating, not 2 leaves per node. if it is an alternanthea, they are a pain in the butt to grow sometimes. even in my high tech dirt tank, it is an agonizingly slow grower.


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## Fishies_in_Philly (Dec 8, 2011)

oh, and i agree with Jorge, either dose excel everyday, or add some sort of injected co2. plants need carbon and the more the better.


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