Red Plants Driving Me Nuts

[benetay]

Stan i notice such occurrence not only in planted tank, even land plants react in such a way.

Cheers!

[YamaMuthu]

Longer high intensity lighting period also makes them go redder. I got itchy fingered and left the light on for 18 hours and all the red plants became more intense red. Perhaps nitrate intake became high and supply became short?

I do believe cool water and Fe dosing are also key.

I haven't tried dosing any minerals or fert before, but long duration exposire to high light with low temperature seems to be able to keep all my red plants happy. Don't even need Co2....

[ivanlo24]

Gotten chiller and temp at 25 degrees. Got 2 x t5 so 312 Watts of light. Am keeping rotala macandra. Still not red. Magnesium is via the powder right? From NA?

[genes]

I totally agree on the points regarding the parabolic or spider reflectors on the T5 lights. I use 4x39W T5HO with the parabolic reflectors and my plants grew red without even dosing any additives.

[StanChung]

Stan i notice such occurrence not only in planted tank, even land plants react in such a way.

Cheers!

They do? I suppose they're not much different.

I haven't tried dosing any minerals or fert before, but long duration exposire to high light with low temperature seems to be able to keep all my red plants happy. Don't even need Co2....

Till it runs out IMO. A lot of people get nice 3 month growth then everything is downhill and they don't know why.

I have occasionally just top up soil and it works wonders on top of the skip daily dosing. I should dose less N if the planted gurus advice are right. Difficult to keep all of the plants happy this way though.