Sunset Hygro has wrinkled leaves..

[sparagmos]

Hello everyone..
I am growing some sunset hygro in my aquarium and it has beautiful red leaves, however lately the plants have started to grow wrinkled ugly red leaves. I don't know if i am overdosing ferts into the water but I use Flourish, Flourish excel, Flourish Iron, Flourish Trace and Flourish NPK at every water change. Water changes are done once every three days. I know that there is chart on this website.. but honestly, i have been having good results doing this. Except recently with the sunset Hygro.
The liquid fertilization is used in conjuction with DIY Co2 injection along with 110watts of lighting for a 20 gallon long aquarium.
My substrate is eco-complete and i have malaysian trumpet snails, red cherry shrimps, Japonica or amano shrimps and 19 neon tetras.
I do not know what element is lacking.. but since i changed the substrate recently i do not want to add the flourish tabs, which i used occasionally for optimum plant growth.
Any help with this will be appreciated. Thank you all for taking the time to read my thread. Have a good day!

[Tech Support BB]

In my experience, wrinkled leaves like you are describing comes from a lack of available carbon. Portions of the leaves grow faster than others, resulting in a rippled appearance and short, stubby growth. I would expect that your DIY CO2 injector (which I assume means yeast) is approaching the end of its life. You can counter this with more frequent additions of Flourish Excel. I find the best results with this product come with daily use, so if you are dosing less frequently than that, my advice would be to move to a daily schedule.

Also, it is possible that the iron in your tank is a bit low. Iron assists with electron transport in plants, which is a fancy way of saying it moves nutrients from the roots to the leaves and back. If your iron is low, you could be experiencing "cold spots" in the leaves where they aren't getting enough nutrients to properly utilize the available carbon, again resulting in uneven growth. If more frequent dosage of Excel doesn't help, try a daily dose of Flouris Iron as well.

Hope this helps.

[sparagmos]

Thank you for your reply... i will try what you said and let you know how it goes. I think you are right about the CO2 injection levels dropping because i haven't seen too many bubbles coming out. So, i think i will start to add excel daily and replenish the yeast. Do you think adding Flourish tabs will help to replace iron along with Flourish iron? Or do you think thats a little excessive? I was thinking that since I have eco-complete as my substrate, and its brand new, i won't need to worry about Iron levels. But i guess i was wrong.
Thank you again for your time! Hope you have a good day!

[Tech Support BB]

Flourish Tabs add considerably more to the substrate than just iron, so it is always a good choice to use them in conjunction with our other products. It certainly would not hurt or be excessive, as the plants will only absorb what they need and no more. In this particular case, I think Flourish Iron is more specific to your problem since it is targeted for foliar feeding rather than root feeding.

[sparagmos]

Thank you very much for your responses. I really appreciate the time you take to explain everything. I have started to add Excel daily and also replenished the yeast to get a fresh start on the co2 injection. Hopefully i will see changes within a week or so. Thank you again.
Is there a way to post pictures on your website, so you can use the pictures as examples or get an idea to understand the problems aquascapists/ aquarists face with their fish or plants? Just out of curiosity..

Thanks again!

[Tech Support JR]

Difficult to do just yet but we are working on it.