Is this an APT 3 tank? I have had some stunting of my rotala blood red after 3 months in with APT feast on APT 3 aiming for 2-5 nitrate. It grew so fast before but now seems to be growing very slowly. Do you add root tabs this quickly with APT feast ?
No I haven't used root tabs here. This tank is many months old by now. I've added new aquasoil once for the other groups, but not Rotala 'blood red'. APT3 is used here and residual
NO3 is zero. Rotala 'blood red' never stunts due to a lack of nutrients. None of the Rotala rotundifolia variants do - all other plants will be dead long before you see stunting of RR species due to lack of nutrients - they are super scavengers in that aspect, and its laughable when folks use them as an indicator for low nutrients. They are super resilient in that regard, and you can only stunt them by over-dosing nutrients or other forms of abuse.
If adding more nutrients solved most plant problems, everyone on this forum would have picture perfect tanks - because that is the easiest thing to do. Do the tanks that have the highest nutrient levels look the best or produce the best looking plants? heh. What one sees is that even with similar or identical nutrient dosing approaches, plant growth form, colour and density outcomes vary tremendously.
Principally because there are a ton of other variables that affect plant growth outcomes. My tanks are the ultimate example of how rather simple nutrient dosing approaches can produce great outcomes. In the earlier days when I used custom raw soil mixes or custom fertilizer, folks say that my edge came because of those custom implements. Today, I'm using exactly the same tools that are commercially available for anyone to try. The goal of commercializing some of the tools was to make it easier for folks to approach the hobby, by allowing them to focus on other things rather than substrate/liquid fertilizer. Tom barr had the similar idea when he came up with EI - with the idea that with everything in slight excess, folks can focus on other aspects of horticulture work rather than nutrients.
The greatest irony is that forum threads here still waste 90% of their time focusing on nutrients when diagnosing plant issues.... 1ppm
PO4 is not enough? 5 is better? Why not just do 100ppm of everything, will that solve the nutrient angle finally.
Many of the other factors that affect plant growth besides lights/CO2/nutrients can be found in the article below:
Is my aquatic plant suffering from a nutrient deficiency? How do I diagnose nutrient deficiency issues? Are there other factors that affect plant growth besides nutrients? This page aims to explain how many factors besides nutrients can affect aquatic plant health.
www.2hraquarist.com
