difficulty keeping plants

[panboy]

i have a 46g, 2.7 wpg with co2, and some of my plants are horrible

my cabomba is never healthy, the stems are always weak and yellow.
my water wisteria grows sooooo slow, and only the new leaves are green, the older ones are brownish/black and shriveling up.
and my ulvaceous always has holes in the leaves, which eventually makes the leaves pretty much rot.

i also add liquid fertilizer and potassium....

what can i do, its so annoying!

 

[panboy]

?

do you think root tabs would help?
hopefully someone can give me some advice, because im going to stop by the lfs tomorrow

 

[babyfish]

Instead of buying plants from your lfs... find an online plant supplier and buy one of thier Economy plant collections.

These are great value for money and let you try lots of different types of plants to find the ones which suit your set up.

Water wisteria requires re planting at regular intervals as the lower leaves usually die off... simply chop the top off one of them so that you have a piece about 4-7 inches long... strip away the bottom 2-4 leaves to get a clean stem of a bout 1-2 inches then push into substrate

Cabomba always seems to grow best when left floating I've found.

Root tabs are best for plants with vigorous roots swords..crypts...vallis

Liquid ferts are good for plants like hygrophilia...cabomba...milfoil...hornwort

 

[panboy]

thats a good idea, but i would like to try and make these plants survive, and i believe i have enough light to keep them.

i know i must me missing something, only if i knew what it was.

my cabomba grows fast, but the older parts of the stem are yellow and seem like they are starting to rot. they start getting covered in algae too once its yellow.
however, the new couple inches at the end still have green stems, so it must be missing some nutrient to keep it alive.

anything else?

 

[smithrc]

that sounds like it wants more light.

it grows to the surface and then the rest of the leaves are left to dye while the top stays green...

only a thought.

 

[panboy]

i thoght 2.7 wpg was plenty of light for those type of plants though

 

[smithrc]

I thought 120W with reflectors over a 40UK was enough - but it needs to be the right type of light.

I bought 2 dennrel plant tubes today - trichromatic (most light output is in the red green and blue areas)

and hopefully they will do the trick nicely.

 

[panboy]

i have a compact 96w thats 6500k. and some random tube (the one that came with the tank, its an allglass fixture... not sure what 'k' it is