# Rotala thriving or dying?



## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

Rotala rotundifolia is not red. The top ,20% of each stem will turn pink if you have enough light for it however. Google Rotala "Macrandra". Not the easiest plant. Likes CO2.
Does not like excess of GH boosters. Might be effected by the ammonia.
But why wouldn't you use ferts/w the plants now ? CO2 also ?
I think Current has PAR charts on their fixtures on their site.
I'm thinking you will need 60 or better @ the sub for getting any amount of red from
that plant(plus the CO2) and it looks as if you might be there/w the light level.
So I'd check and that may give you an idea of what to expect from it once it settles in.
But the general growth in there says conditions aren't far off from being good for the
plants. But Rotala may react to being moved and can loose bottom leaves because of it.
Takes a while for thaqt one to settle in also. The CO2(if you do start it) will expedite 
this, but it took months for some I got that was in bad condition to START to show
signs of getting better in my (s)low tech tank. And BTW it wouldn't do anything till
I stopped(didn't actually need it)using a GH booster in there.
It wasn't Macrandra but rather Magenta and they may act differently about the GH
booster. Till they got over the shock of the move and in that bad condition it likely
took longer to grow some new roots, it just kept loosing more of the bottom leaves.
And that's not going to grow back either. You just need to wait it out till new stems
come up and AFTER they reach the top cut away the old stems. That growth on those new stems will be because of the environment in your tank anyway and won't look the same as the old stuff you bought.


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## msncookie (Jul 14, 2015)

Thanks for your insight. If I bought an expert-level plant, it wasn't my intention. The cycling is showing signs of being nearly done so maybe that will help. I was advised by an expert to hold off on ferts for a while if using eco-complete and see how things go. But I did buy Flourish, Flourish Trace, and Excel (if deemed necessary). I figured I'd start with the first two once cycling was done and things have stabilized.


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