Nutrient deficiency?

[The Mutant]

Look at how yellow all of my roths have turned! What's wrong? I had them too close to the T5, but it must be something else as well. Why are they so yellow and how can I fix it? I got really depressed when I compared the old and new photos. They've all lost so many leaves and turned so yellow...

Also, if there is something they lack, do any of the Nordic members know how I can get hold of whatever it is they need? It seems to be hard to buy certain chemicals here in Sweden due to idiots using them in bombs and such.

How it looked when I got it:

How it looks now (it has turned so yellow, that there must be something wrong...):

The acclamied 'MM' x self when I got it:

Now:

The x sib 'Jim Krull' x 'CC' when I got it:

And what's left of it now...:

The x sib 'Oriental Red' x 'MM' when I got it:

And now:

 

[Ozpaph]

Do they have roots?
How much and what fertiliser are you using?
LESS light.

 

[Bjorn]

Possibly less light, but also ammonia/urea
B

 

[The Mutant]

The less light is already in action, by me raising the T5. How many hours would you say it should be on? They all stand in an East facing window, so they also get natural daylight.

They are being fed K-lite and seaweed extract (40 ppm N). Almost all have roots, especially 'Starship', it had an impressive root system when I repotted it a month ago. 'Oriental Red' x 'MM' has one viable root that I can see without digging in the pot, plus it has a new root growing. The acclaimed 'MM' x self, I don't know. It's time to repot it soon, so then I'll see what the roots look like. 'Jim Krull' x 'CC' has no viable roots or new roots that I can see, unfortunately.

Bjorn: Where can I get ammonia/urea, and what is it called? Do you know the Swedish name for it, or do you know a brand that's being sold up here in the north?

 

[gonewild]

I got really depressed when I compared the old and new photos.

When you compare old and new photos you must take the photos using the same light source. Assuming the new photos are taken using the same white background.....Notice the color of the old background in the photos is a blue grey color and notice in the new photos it is a warmer shade of white. The warmer color light will make the green leaves look more yellow and the original light make the leaves look darker green.

I'm not saying the leaves have not gotten more yellow just pointing out that you really noticed the difference when you compared before and after pictures. Maybe the actual difference is not as extreme as the pictures make you think.

If you can in Photoshop adjust the color balance of the new pictures until the white background color matches the color of the old background. Don't try to adjust the leaf color. If you add blue, green and cyan the leaves start to look more green.

 

[Bjorn]

Mutant: uncertain about that; when my plants got pale after a season with only K-lite I started mixing it 50:50 with an urea based foliar feed. Had to adjust pH down with quite significant amounts of citric acid doing that so I would not recommend this practise to someone without a certain chemistry background and a pH meter. Most house plant fertilisers have a certain amount of ammonium-N look at the label and use some additional to the K-Lite. Ammonium-N is more or less the same as urea since the urea transform to ammonium. Problem is that ammonium fertilisers may acidify the soil quite significantly. In that case some limestone is required. Also: a fertiliser level of 150-300 ppm is ok. 300ppm is 3g/10l. Perhaps best to use a stock solution?
Btw. My plants are not pale anymore (with a few exeptions) but it took some time.

 

[keithrs]

How often do you feed?

 

[papheteer]

My plants showed that kind of yellowing too. I switched to a urea based fertilizer 3 months ago and my plants have greened up. In some of then the improvement is night and day! I also started using just tap water.

 

[The Mutant]

Mutant: uncertain about that; when my plants got pale after a season with only K-lite I started mixing it 50:50 with an urea based foliar feed. Had to adjust pH down with quite significant amounts of citric acid doing that so I would not recommend this practise to someone without a certain chemistry background and a pH meter. Most house plant fertilisers have a certain amount of ammonium-N look at the label and use some additional to the K-Lite. Ammonium-N is more or less the same as urea since the urea transform to ammonium. Problem is that ammonium fertilisers may acidify the soil quite significantly. In that case some limestone is required. Also: a fertiliser level of 150-300 ppm is ok. 300ppm is 3g/10l. Perhaps best to use a stock solution?
Btw. My plants are not pale anymore (with a few exeptions) but it took some time.

Okay, I have some ordinary fertilizer, so I'll add some of that (it has N, I checked). We have pretty high pH where I live, so hopefully that won't be an issue. I have recently ordered an osmosis filter, and I saw that the same web shop has both pH meters and TDS meters at reasonable prices, so I'll save till I can buy both (I seem to need them after all).

Thanks a lot Bjorn!

How often do you feed?

Every watering.

 

[The Mutant]

Bjorn:Is it okay to add epsom salts with every watering? Others have suggested it in the other thread, so I thought I should do that. Should I mix the ordinary fertilizer with K-lite, and add epsom salts on top of that?

 

[Bjorn]

Bjorn:Is it okay to add epsom salts with every watering? Others have suggested it in the other thread, so I thought I should do that. Should I mix the ordinary fertilizer with K-lite, and add epsom salts on top of that?

Should be ok, I have done that in the past. Just do not exaggerate the amounts. Try to mix stock solutions of the ingredients and use those to add to the irrigation water. K-lite first, then epsom salt. Do not mix the stock solutions as this will most probably cause precipitation. However if you use K-lite, epsom salt should hardly be necessary?

 

[Ruth]

I don't have pictures, but I was having a similar problem with the yellowing leaves in my paphs and phrags. I fertilize with KLite, RO water, and something called Thrive Alive B-1 but not on a regular basis. I read from one of Stone' s posts about adding Amonium Nitrate, and so I added a small amount per plant, and because it takes a couple of months to work and I wasn't patient, I also added Epson salts but only one time. Also Slipperking said that if you aren't fertilizing regularly you are starving your plants to death. Since then I have tried to be very rigorous about fertilizing every Monday with Klite and the B-1 (about 150 on my TDS meter). My paphs and phrags have greened right up along with the other orchids and houseplants that I have. I think what I was doing was watering to much with the RO water and flushing out all of the nutrients. I have also seen some good growth on the plants. I do attribute some of the green up to the Amonium Nitrate, but I am sure all the changes have contributed. I love all the information that I get on this forum!!!

 

[The Mutant]

Should be ok, I have done that in the past. Just do not exaggerate the amounts. Try to mix stock solutions of the ingredients and use those to add to the irrigation water. K-lite first, then epsom salt. Do not mix the stock solutions as this will most probably cause precipitation. However if you use K-lite, epsom salt should hardly be necessary?

I also thought I wouldn't have to add epsom salt when using K-lite, but if people says it could help green my poor babies up, then I'm all for it. I won't mix the stocks, I'll mix it in the water instead.

 

[Rick]

Are you able to check pH yet.

Those substrates look heavily loppsided on sphagnum moss, and pH may have dropped very low. If that's the case, then no amount of food of any kind will go into the plant.

 

[The Mutant]

Are you able to check pH yet.

Those substrates look heavily loppsided on sphagnum moss, and pH may have dropped very low. If that's the case, then no amount of food of any kind will go into the plant.

About 1/4 of the substrat is sphagnum. I have sphagnum on top to encourage and protect new root growthh. I don't have a pH meter yet, it's on my list though.

 

[Rick]

I've only tried this once so I'm not making any proclamations on effectiveness, but I did get a sample of ammonium magnesium phosphate (MagAmp or struvite under some names).

I applied once to my lightest paphs which happen to be roths and sanderianums almost a month ago. All my other multi species are much darker. The stuff is dificult to disolve and should be acidified to melt it. So not sure how much actually got into the pots, but pretty sure some of the finely ground powder made it into the pots, and maybe to slow release like in a top dress.

They actually seemed to get lighter in the week following application, so I applied heavier doses than usual of MgSO4 (about 1/16 tsp per gallon) every 2-3 days over the subsequent weeks, and they are definitely greener now, but still lighter than other multi's.

At this point Mag sulfate with kelp seems to be better for me at greening things up. The nitrogen in kelp is diverse (ammonia and ammino acids) so maybe that makes up for the primary nitrate in K lite.

 

[Rick]

If we want to play the environment story,

roths come from over serpentine or "ultramorphic or ultrabasic" geology. The composition of that rock is primarily magnesium hydroxide silicates, and is not only low in K but low in Ca. (It's also notoriously high in Ni but that is generally a toxic metal).

Looking at leaf tissue data for plant species found over serpentine, they do not show more Ca than Mg in there tissues, but have ratios similar to typical limestone species.

Maybe that makes them super Ca scavengers (like epiphytes in general are super K scavengers) so excess Ca can cause symptoms of Mg deficiency.??

Also limestone varies dramatically in the ratio of Ca/Mg So I wouldn't be surprised if species prefering dolomite to high Ca limestone would like additional Mg.

 

[Stone]

Mutant, I would consider repotting in bark/charcoal and doing away with the moss or maybe including a very small amount in your mix. You may find it easier to manage the plants in this type of mix. Then you can begin to feed them with some 50/50 nitrate/ammonium and/or urea type fertilizer once they are stablized in the new mix. And use some dolomite from time to time. (the more urea/ammonium, the more dolomite/limestone). Also go easy on the Magnesium. I don't think its the cause of the yellow leaves in your case. I would also consider a light foliar spray with a good quality Urea to get some color (N) back into the leaves and not so much pot feeding until the roots are growing well. Good luck!

Just re-reading your post you mentioned you repotted a month ago and they have good roots. This tells my they are definitly not short of Calcium but the ARE short of N. As Klite has plenty of N as Nitrate, it could mean that the plants are not converting the nitrate into useable ammonium. Roth has mentioned in the past that this could be due to a lack of Mo. Raising the pH of your medium will often overcome a Mo deficiency without adding more. So check the pH of your medium or repot without the sphag? Or.....drastically reduce the nitrate and increase the ammonium will give you the same results.

 

[Bjorn]

Mutant:Listen to Mikes advice and get rid of that sphagnum. It just keeps things too wet. I never use it, except sometimes in connection with phrags but then on a very limited scale. Living in Sweden, you probably have the possibility to get out in the woods - or a park etc and find some moss. Look for a springy texture and make a mix like that of Lance Birk, ie 8parts bark, 2parts(compressed) moss cut in pieces. I use scissors for that so that it eventually end up as strands of perhaps 2cm to an inch, and finally one part of sand. Find a playground and take some sand from that. Mix well and moisten. You get a quite springy compost that may have to be packed a bit into the pot but it last for years. Personally, I tend to add gravel and perhaps limestone to the mix as well. With bigger plants it is good to have some weight at the base.
Rick: You touch into an enigma that has puzzled me for quite long. Many reports claim that paphs do not grow into the baserock and that the geology in many cases is more or less insignificant. Roth is supposed to be one such. Others like lithophytes obviously are exposed to the geology, my own experience using marble chips growing medium indicates that eg vietnamense tolerates limestone well, but roth not. The effect is stunted rootgrowth on else healthy plants(that does not grow much but looks ok). Even if marble is not ultrabasic, it has a bit of the same high pH and I would thus not expect that just altering to Mg minerals makes such a difference. Since I have plenty of roth seedlings and access to olivine grits( olivine is a magnesium silicate with some iron, one of the prime minerals of ultrabasic rocks, closely related to serpentine) I will do some tests. But that will be future when my roth flasks are ready for potting. However, since lots of people have success growing roth in more acid environments, Idoubt that this is the solution;

 

[Paphman910]

Check the water quality with the city and found out the pH.

You can find pH test kits at aquarium shops.

My pH is around 6.8 and the water TDS is about 28PPM.