Trying to get the Red back

[fish4schurr]

Hey Everyone:

I am looking online and only finding articles and forum posts from like 2015 so I am hoping someone can help me out with a newer rule of thumb. I have 2 tanks that have a 1 or 2 red/pink plants in them. I currently dose iron 1 time a week and am trying to figure out how do I know how often I should dose the iron. I do water changes every Saturday or Sunday and then dose on Monday.

Now I have been informed by some articles by Oliver Knott and Dennis Wong that basically said that dosing iron has nothing to do with it. Basically I am trying to understand what I can do to get back the red that was in some of my plants.

Naturally I don't want algae to go out of control from over-fertilization but I am having a hard time knowing how much is enough. It seems like a lot of it is just trial and error. Figured I would come to yall.


Would appreciate some advice on making those reds POP!

[DonkeyFish]

Are you dosing anything other than iron? And what are the other conditions (soil, light, etc).

[fish4schurr]

Are you dosing anything other than iron? And what are the other conditions (soil, light, etc).

Aquarium COOP Easy Green, UNS Contrasoil, and a 1000w grow light (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0833 ... UTF8&psc=1). Light is on for 8 hours a day.

[DonkeyFish]

If you’re dosing an all-in-one fertilizer it’s going to be considerably more challenging, since you can’t modify the individual components. “Competition color” (as I call it) are largely achieved by limiting nitrogen. Basically it causes the plant to break chlorophyll in search of the nutrient it’s missing.
But there’s better people in this group to talk about this stuff than me. For sure.

[fish4schurr]

If you’re dosing an all-in-one fertilizer it’s going to be considerably more challenging, since you can’t modify the individual components. “Competition color” (as I call it) are largely achieved by limiting nitrogen. Basically it causes the plant to break chlorophyll in search of the nutrient it’s missing.
But there’s better people in this group to talk about this stuff than me. For sure.

Oh that's interesting! Does anyone know of any good books or resources I can read on overall aquatic plants? I really want to be able to dial it in with all of my plants. Getting the red back would be great in the plants but it seems this is an area that I am lacking in my aquatic expertise so for sure open to suggestions.

[DonkeyFish]

I’d send you to Dennis Wong’s site/channel. Tons of good information there, and backed by science and experience rather than hogwash and popularity to sell a product like what you’re currently using (although recently he has put out his own fertilizer, almost everything on his site pre-dates it).

You could try Karen Randall’s book Sunken Gardens, although it’s not solely about specifics on plant keeping it’s got some good info in it.