Help with Rotala Macrandra

[penguinleo]

Hi.

My rotala macrandra isn't doing as well as I expected.

As you can see in the photos below, the leaves in the middle of the stem are in a way, discolouring. The leaves should be red and pink but they are getting small patches of yellow and green on them. What may be the problem?

There isn't anything covering the leaves, I add fertilisers once a week (flourish, iron and potassium), have strong light.

Thanks in advance.

[Plantman]

red leaves do need a lot more iron.

may be you could at a little more and cut back on other feretliser to starve the algae.

[bli]

Hi Penguinleo,

First of al full complements go out to you on tour wicked looking planted tank!

My rotala macrandra (I just call it the red plant) is taking off better than any of my other plants in my discus set up. I have to prune once a week!

Temp = 28

Ph = 6.2

Substrate = Daltons Aquatic Mix & Silica Sand

C02 = 2 x Yeast mix

Lighting = 2 x 54w T5HO Power Glo, 3 x 30w T8 Aquaglo

I add about 10ml of Flourish every second day and 40ml of Nutrafin NPK once a week after an 80% water change.

I havent been in the hobby long enough to be giving out advice but the one thing I have noticed in my brief but full on last 8 months since getting into the hobby is that one plant may do great in one tank but not so well in another. For example I had a smaller tank where my Indian fern flourished... put it in my larger set up (exactly the same parameters) and it died off completely. I guess every set up has its own balance! All the best and hope yours starts to take off. Great Job!!

[Alan]

Love the pics guys, but try and get them down to 128000 bytes if you can.

It is something about the bandwidth I think.

It is apparently a bit expensive when higher than this is used.

It also takes a while for dial-up members to download.

Thanks.