# Water Sprite Growing + Browning



## BBradbury (Nov 8, 2010)

*Water Sprite*

Hello Mic...

Water sprite doesn't do well planted. The reason is, the leaves below don't get enough light and die off. You end up with a tall plant that's all stem and has leaves at the top.

I like to attach it loosely to a piece of floating driftwood. This way, all the leaves are close to the light source.

Large, weekly water changes will maintain healthy levels of nitrate, phosphate and sulfate. Aquatic plants need these nutrients for sustained growth.

I also rotate different liquid fertilizers and dose a little when I do my weekly water changes.

The lighting needs to be a little stronger. A couple of watts per gallon of tank volume is enough and you can use standard florescent bulbs from the hardware store. 6500K bulbs are best, because they come closest to natural daylight at 5500K.

Hope this info. helps.

B


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## Michael M (Sep 20, 2012)

BBradbury said:


> Hello Mic...
> 
> Water sprite doesn't do well planted. The reason is, the leaves below don't get enough light and die off. You end up with a tall plant that's all stem and has leaves at the top.


The plant is browning floating, the tank is very well lit. Looking at PAR data would the Finnex Ray2 DS not be giving me over 166 PAR to my floating plants and close to 70 PAR for my plants near the substrate, isn't that like, a lot of light for a low tech tank?



> I like to attach it loosely to a piece of floating driftwood. This way, all the leaves are close to the light source.


I have some pieces like that in my driftwood but really the plant floating or planted seems to on the anemic side.



> Large, weekly water changes will maintain healthy levels of nitrate, phosphate and sulfate. Aquatic plants need these nutrients for sustained growth.


Yes I do weekly 25%-30% water changes (two 5.5 gallon buckets).



> I also rotate different liquid fertilizers and dose a little when I do my weekly water changes.


I am a bit weary of fertilizers because amphibians are present in this tank, could you suggest some safe/mild nutrient supplements my tank may be lacking? I am a bit worried about using anything like Excel because I have a lot of jungle vals in this tank and I believe they react poorly to it?



> The lighting needs to be a little stronger. A couple of watts per gallon of tank volume is enough and you can use standard florescent bulbs from the hardware store. 6500K bulbs are best, because they come closest to natural daylight at 5500K.


Are you sure my lights are the issue? I mean the 36" Ray2 7k/7k is a rather beefy LED light for a low tech tank 40B? Are the top level plants not getting rather blasted with light, which water sprite likes? I mean I could get a second Ray2 but would that not make my tank glow like the sun? It's already quite bright, I assume any more light would welcome algae.

I'm still a bit confused. :\


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## bennyjam (Nov 6, 2012)

My water sprite is doing the same thing. Growing like crazy but the older leaves die off. I feel your frustration. "Runnin' against the wind"


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## Michael M (Sep 20, 2012)

bennyjam said:


> My water sprite is doing the same thing. Growing like crazy but the older leaves die off. I feel your frustration. "Runnin' against the wind"


I feel your pain good sir. I really like the plant because it gives my clawed frogs a place to rest and bask. I know my tank is well lit, I would feel guilty to blast my frogs with any more light than I already do..

The browning and the constant need to remove old, dying leaves is well, frustrating me, big time. I think it grows much more pale than it used to as well.

I know I am not crazy, this plant once was doing fantastic..

Maybe I should swap it out with another floating plant that is similar but less prone to this odd behavior? Any suggestions?


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## bennyjam (Nov 6, 2012)

Lighting might be my issue. It tends to be the stuff at the bottom that's dying off. I notice it happening with my Brazilian pennywort as well, though not as bad. I have t5ho 2 24 watt bulbs over a 30 gallon. I dose EI and gave pressurized co2. I would hope that your fixture would be enough, especially if our not dosing heavily or using co2.


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## sarazorz (Feb 11, 2013)

I don't intend to rub it in, but my water sprite is growing like crazy and is very healthy. I am not having any browning problems and the bottom leaves are doing just fine.
So, I'm not sure what might be wrong with yours but I can tell you what I did right with mine, and maybe that will help you figure out what's going on! 

I'm using a Finnex Daylight LED (like you!)
I planted the stuff in dirt; Miracle Grow Organic with a Sand/Gravel cap
I dose with Excel and Iron every day
Water temp is 78F
pH is 7.6 
I have medium hard water: kH 4, gH 8
Nitrates stay between 5-20.

You can see a few pics of the water sprite in my tank journal if you like (link is in my signature). I hope you find out what's wrong! Good luck!


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## tomfromstlouis (Apr 2, 2012)

When I grew my water sprite in a CO2 enhanced tanik, it was one of the first to suffer if I neglected dosing ferts. My guess is that this is a fast growing fert hungry plant that is quick to show its hunger. Again guessing, your readings of 5-10ppm of nitrates does not strike me as very rich in this essential nutrient?


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## Michael M (Sep 20, 2012)

The bottom of my tank is only sand, I use a single root tab for my crypt wendtii. 

It is vacuumed weekly and I do a 25% water change. My best guess here is that duckweed is starving the water sprite since it is probably 'better/faster' at using the nitrates, I assume?

Am I keeping too clean a tank? lol..


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## Aqualady (Jan 14, 2013)

I tooo have been having browning issues and mine was taking over my tank at first, then, I placed MGP soil and capped with pfs and it seems to grow but brown and die off at the same pace....


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## Michael M (Sep 20, 2012)

Sounds like this is a common problem with this plant, bummer. It's a nice plant and fills in tanks nicely.


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

Imho, your light is fine but the plant needs more food. I would bet that the roots are rotting as the result. Feed it or replace it with another plant.

via Droid DNA Tapatalk 2


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## Michael M (Sep 20, 2012)

OVT said:


> Imho, your light is fine but the plant needs more food. I would bet that the roots are rotting as the result. Feed it or replace it with another plant.
> 
> via Droid DNA Tapatalk 2


I would agree my water sprite is lacking some kind of nutrient, I am just unsure what that nutrient is.

This is one theory I have, and I do admit I am a complete and utter newbie with high tech tanks, co2, fertilizers, ect.. but is it possible the fact my tank has a lot of light perhaps be my problem? 

The plant is receiving a lot of light and maybe that is triggering growth but since it lacks the nutrients to maintain the entire plant structure it's allowing parts to wither and die to keep up with the new growth?

Perhaps I could cut back on my lighting period? I currently run my Ray2 lights 10 hours per day, then a small Marineland single bright kicks on in the evening for moonlights. Do you think cutting back to 8 hours or so would be better? I wouldn't mind slower growth so long as I didn't get so much die off.

Because I do keep amphibians in this tank I would rather steer clear of CO2/Fertilizers since I have no idea what is safe for these animals and I cherish them too much to experiment.


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

Water sprite will grow fine under very low light. Another cheap option is to try API's LeafZone. I would call / email their customer support to double-check it is safe for frogs.

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## chibikaie (Aug 2, 2012)

I think you are right that the water sprite is trying to grow and lacking necessary nutrients. Duckweed is a serious nutrient hog, in my experience (and I suspect it of hogging trace elements that are already in short supply). You also have a very bright light, which encourages growth. Most likely, the plants are scavenging nutrients from older leaves to put out new ones. On the one hand, water sprite is so robust that it is still going whereas less hardy plants would have stalled out or died off; on the other hand, it's not giving you much in the way of clues as to what it needs.

If you aren't planning on adding fertilizers to support plant growth, perhaps you could reduce the amount of light and switch to a slower growing plant.


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## JustAGuy716 (Aug 28, 2012)

Seems like OVT hit it on the head before with your plant just needing more food. 

Have you checked your P levels? I keep Water sprite floating in almost all of my tanks and it seems like it is the first to let me know if phosphate is low, doing almost exactly what you describe - browning leaves, followed by dying roots and then brown spots on stems.

While I never had an issue with Sprite removing all of the nitrate in a tank, it is more than willing to suck out all the phosphate (and I overdose K, so I doubt that's the limiting factor).

The fact that you are still getting new growth at all means that your shortage isn't any of the following: Calcium, Boron, Sulfur, Copper, Iron, Manganese. These are immobile nutrients, which means that the plant can't move them from old growth to new if it can't get any more.

The short list of mobile nutrients is: Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg). If any of those are in short supply, then the plant will reclaim what it can from the old growth and put it into new growth. Since K & Mg are hard to test for, I'd start with N & P testing if I were you.

Good luck


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## Michael M (Sep 20, 2012)

JustAGuy716 said:


> Seems like OVT hit it on the head before with your plant just needing more food.
> 
> Have you checked your P levels? I keep Water sprite floating in almost all of my tanks and it seems like it is the first to let me know if phosphate is low, doing almost exactly what you describe - browning leaves, followed by dying roots and then brown spots on stems.
> 
> ...


I'm a low-tech dude what are good tests for N & P? Is Nitrogen (N) = Nitrate? I do test my Nitrates weekly with an API FW kit before I do a water change, I usually get a reading of 5ppm/10ppm.

Also what products could I use to dose these nutrients to see if the plants could possibly grow again without cannibalizing itself?

My duckweed is actually even growing pretty slow these days, I get the feeling I have very low nitrates and I am probably missing some key nutrients.

I've decided to go back to my maintenance routine from when my plants were doing better. So doing two ~10% water changes weekly rather than one 25% water change. I used to do weekly 10% changes because my tank is under stocked really even 3 adult clawed frogs in a 40B is considered 55% stocked, though they do create a lot of waste.. definitely more than fish. Seems like when I did less fussing with the tank, the plants grew more/better.


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## JustAGuy716 (Aug 28, 2012)

One way I add phosphate in my dwarf frog tank is that I just stopped thawing the frozen bloodworms I add. The liquid they are frozen in is full of phosphate. Once I started doing that, the water sprite in that tank greened up nicely


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## Michael M (Sep 20, 2012)

JustAGuy716 said:


> One way I add phosphate in my dwarf frog tank is that I just stopped thawing the frozen bloodworms I add. The liquid they are frozen in is full of phosphate. Once I started doing that, the water sprite in that tank greened up nicely


That's a bit ironic. As when my frogs were small I used to feed frozen mysis shrimp and hikari frozen bloodworms. I do recall the plants being more lush back then. Since my frogs are just so large now I feed them earthworms (bait shop canadian nightcrawlers) mostly, some times crickets and reptomin.

My other tank is a 20 gallon, it's a little overstocked (6 corydora, 8 cardinal tetra, ramshorn snails) but it's doing insanely well and the water wisteria in there is just doing great, thank tank does get bloodworms still, I wonder if that's the secret ingredient missing lol..

I think I will pick up some PE Mysis Shrimp and feed my frogs once a week with it. They used to love that stuff and I guess though they are now large they can still eat it as a snack + add some nutrients I may be missing.


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## Michael M (Sep 20, 2012)

Quick update. My water sprite appears to be improving. I took off my spray bar and just have the outtake flow coming through the tube now near the surface of the water. My floating plants don't get clumped so badly now and receive light more evenly.

I picked up some frozen mysis shrimp but unfortunately this food is just too small for my frogs to bother eating but I guess it is adding phosphate to my tank lol.. (I have ghost shrimp in the tank I guess they will find, eat it).


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