bubbling plants.

[apuppet]

Hey all,

i've been goofing around with dry dosing my tank. and i've found that after dosing, & while lights on, the plants would be bubbling and suchs.  everything, ferns, swords, all my plants would create little bubbles, shooting them out in rows.  really cool to stare at. its like little machine guns bubbles. i Dose every second day.    my question is , after day 1 of this. day 2, its much less, much much less.   bubbling constantly like this, is it healthy for the plants and natural?   do plants need to rest on day2? or should i constantly dose the tank to bubble them?  or perhaps let day 2 as a day for plants to rest?

ps. heavy planted tanks about 9 months establish and no algea issues.

thanks

-a

[babblefish1960]

I'm not sure what you mean by dry dosing, unless you mean adding micro-nutrients in the form of powders as fertilizers. If this is the case, and you have adequate lighting, as it seems you have, what you are seeing occur is often referred to as pearling, this means simply that the plant is producing enough oxygen during photosynthesis for you to actually witness the process. It is not a problem if this is what is happening, it sounds in fact as something everyone would like to see happening in their own tanks. The rate at which you indicate the pearling is occurring would be telling you that there is a lot of activity happening within the plants, and this of course translates into a lot of work for you with the trimming and what have you, as regards the maintenance of the plants.

Have fun with your underwater garden. Any chance of some pictures?

[Seanc]

i dought it is pearling, because with pearling, the O2 stays stuck to the plants. It sounds like the plants are more likely bleeding CO2. if it is a rapid stream of the bubbles. I'm not sure what causes it though.
HTH

[BigDaddy]

A stream of bubbles coming from the plant is from a damaged part of the plant.  "Streamers" look cool, but really don't mean a lot, unless you have many of them ... which means you have lots of tissue damage on the plant itself.