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Unidentified nutrient deficiency
I'm trying to figure out a nutrient deficiency in my 10 gallon aquarium. I recently replaced the substrate with "Profile", and replanted the stunted and previously neglected plants -- mostly small sword plants.
The plants started growing well at first, but some of them had distorted and yellowish new growth. Now all of them have stopped growing and the new growth (such as it is) is pale and yellow. I added some pieces of Jobes fern and palm sticks deep in the substrate around the base of some of the plants, but that just caused a major bloom of green hair algae. It had no affect at all on the sword plants.
My water is quite hard, and I was adding small amounts of potasium nitrate before I tried the Jobes sticks. Several different algaes had monentarily taken over and then died out since I overhauled the aquarium. The green hair algae was the current plague, but it was really not that bad. Now it is out of control. BTW, the local water company adds phosphate to control corrosion of the pipes.
Does this sound like an iron deficiency to you? Or calcium, or magnesium, or boron? Or...? The leaves are uniformly pale yellow; they do not have dark green veins, and some of them look twisted and distorted.
I wonder if the Profile, which is a fired clay product made out of fullers earth, may be adsorbing all the bivalent disolved minerals and releasing sodium in their place? Should I try to overload it with gypsum and epsom salts and ferrous sulfate?
I would appreciate any advice. Thanks.
Regards,
Bob