Problems with some Codium and Dragon's Breath!

[Fisker]

So, I recently acquired some really, really beat up dragon's breath, codium, and caulerpa prolifera from a tank on Craigslist. The tank had crashed and been neglected for a long time, and the only thing left surviving was some macros and a portion of the CUC. I saved what I could, and set up a tank after being out of the hobby for a long while. It's a 5.5, that I'll be moving up to a 10 after Christmas.

The dragon's breath has been sitting on my sandbed for the past 2 weeks in high light and moderate flow. It's grown a bit, but over the past couple of days, I've noticed that it's started to become pale. Some portions of it are noticeably pale. I've read online that pale/clear macros are a sign of either too much light, or not enough nutrients.

Nitrates run between 3-5 PPM, and phosphate has been sitting around 0.1 PPM. I seriously doubt that a lack of nutrients is the issue, unless there's not enough iron in the tank. I don't have a test kit for that, though.

The tank is lit by a 23W ABI 10000K PAR38, that sits about 4" off the top of the water. The area I had the dragon's breath in was getting quite a bit of light, so I'm think that maybe it was just bleaching due to light. I have no idea, though, as I wouldn't think that'd be enough light to bleach anything at the sandbed. To test, I took some of the algae and left it where it was, and moved the rest to the other side of the tank, in a lower light situation.

The Codium has been sitting on my sandbed in a moderate light and moderate-low flow area for 2 weeks. I haven't noticed any growth, just that the algae has begun to deteriorate. For example, the majority of the algae has turned brown, and some of it has become "hairy". I don't believe there's hair algae growing on it, but it's a hairy appearance on the branches of the macro. It's strange. I moved it into a higher flow, higher light situation to see if that helps out any.

Any tips? I'm at a loss, mainly due to the lack of info out there on macros.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I’d move the dragons tounge to a low light spot.

The codium sounds sick.
Try cleaning it and giving it better flow.
I have that in high med and low light. But all good flow.

 

[Fisker]

Alright, I moved stuff around to appropriate spots earlier today - thank you!

I'll clean the codium off as much as I can tomorrow, during the water change.

 

[Fisker]

So, the Codium cleaned up a little, and is looking a little bit better - but still not great. I'll keep on basting it with a turkey baster and see if it improves.

The Dragon's Breath, however, just keeps on getting paler. I was told that it could be due to a lack of nutrients, and that the Caulerpa was taking it all up before the other macros could get to it. But, that doesn't make a lot of sense, as the Caulerpa isn't growing explosively yet, either. I don't think it's too much light, either, and it's now sitting on my sandbed in a less bright portion of the tank.

Ideas?

 

[Subsea]

In two weeks, Dragons Breath should show growth. I doubt that you have too much light. I dose iron once a week without using a test kit. Just follow dosage recommendations.

 

[Fisker]

After a late-night water test, nitrates were showing 0 PPM. I think a nitrate deficiency was my issue - so I decided to tackle it head-on, after some research.

I'm using stump remover (AKA 61.4% powdered (potassium?) nitrate) to directly increase nitrates. More or less, this stuff is completely environmentally friendly, and as far as I can tell doesn't actually contain anything dangerous to life. It's just a bunch of nitrate, that I assume would encourage bacteria and other detritavores to grow on stumps and get rid of them naturally. I think, anyway.

I took 10 grams of stump remover, and crushed them up into a fine, white power. It looked pretty bad in the process, but luckily, no one walked in on me. I then dissolved that 10 grams into 1 liter of freshwater, and the resulting solution contained around 6.14 grams of nitrate, or 6,140 PPM of nitrate. By adding 1 ML of that solution per 2 gallons of tank volume, you can raise nitrates in your tank by 0.8 PPM.

I dosed the 10 gallon with 10 ML of that solution, and theoretically raised my nitrates by 1.6 PPM. I added 5 ML to my 5 gallon betta tank as well, to see how the shrimp and plants in that tank react. I'll test in about an hour to see how much I actually raised things by, and I'd say we'll see results within a week as far as how well this is working.