# red ludwigia



## petfish (Sep 16, 2005)

I have some red ludwigias and the leaf tops have faded their red to green, but now the bottom of the leaves are bright red. They are growing like crazy but how do I get the leaf tops to turn red again?

2wpg light, co2, laterite and sand substrate.


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## Gumby (Aug 13, 2004)

It's pretty normal for L. repens to only have red on the bottom of the leaf.


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## Husky_Jim (May 26, 2003)

What type of lighting bulbs you have?


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## DiPpY eGgS (Mar 6, 2005)

the brighter your light, the brighter the colors of your plants seem to come out, in lots of cases.. not all the time, but in most cases..

Sometimes the leaner the nitrates, the redder the leaves become, but I really can't recommend that to you, unless you really know what you are doing..

some plants do not respond very well to the low nitrates, and some times it is really easy to bottom out your nitrates, due to the person not knowing the uptake of nitrates in his/her tank... bottoming out nitrates causes algea blooms..

Are you feeding your plants a balanced diet of nitrate, phosphate, iron, micro nutrients, and potassium?

I have a plant called Ludwigia repens-rubin that gets very red in bright light that has red leaves on it.. looks just like repens, only beet red.


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## petfish (Sep 16, 2005)

husky_jim said:


> What type of lighting bulbs you have?


 I use the 4 foot, 40 watt plant bulb that you get at petsmart thats supposedly made for plants. I think its called flora-glow or..something, I cant remember. I have three of them for a 60 gallon tank.


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## petfish (Sep 16, 2005)

DiPpY eGgS said:


> the brighter your light, the brighter the colors of your plants seem to come out, in lots of cases.. not all the time, but in most cases..
> 
> Sometimes the leaner the nitrates, the redder the leaves become, but I really can't recommend that to you, unless you really know what you are doing..
> 
> ...


 From what ive tested, the nitrate levels are at 20-40 ppm,I do frequent 20% water changes to keep it low between that range. Unfortunatly though the water that comes out of the tap is already at 10 ppm of nitrate here to begin with. I used to fertilize the tank weekly with iron, potass, and the regular flourish furtilizer which contains a bit of macro nutrients, but as I started to notice more green algae growth I stopped because I want the plants to starve the nutrients for the algae out. The regular plants have all stayed nice and green so far and is still growing like crazy and I am noticing the algae is getting less. Even before I did that (when I furtilized weekly) the ludwigias were already turned green from when I bought them. 
I definitly have to check out this Ludwigia repens-rubin that you mentioned. I have a few questions about it. Does it require really low nitrates to be red like the regular repens, or can it still be red in the nitrate levels I have now? Also how bright of light do you run to keep it beet red?
thanks for your replies..


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## DiPpY eGgS (Mar 6, 2005)

the stuff needs lots of light to be very red it seems.. mine are not that beet red right now, because I have so many plants that are arching over them, blocking the light.. lol (i need to trim lol)

it is very hard to find.. it took my plant club a few months to find it, and then a few weeks to actually get some.

Keep up with checking water params... .5-2ppm phosphate.. 10-25ppm nitrate.. and dose the other stuff, as needed.. watch the plants for signs of starving!


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