Dying Plants Help

[martin tobin]

Im a returner to fishkeeping,i recently got a Mini Moon 74 ltr Tall tank with 2x20w white lights. I have had it running since Xmas, with endlers, shrimp's, and two pleck's, my fish are doing good with no problems. My plant's are dying slowly with brown fadded areas and poor if any height along with holes where the plecks have fed, i have been using solid fertilizer in my sand substrate which did not seem to work, i took the advice of local shop and changed to liquid still no real change. I have planted "Amazon Sword which has brown patches and holes" "Bacopa caroliniana which is losing leaves" "Hygrophila which seem to be shrinking " "Rotala rotunidifolia which is strugling in colour and foliage" to name but a few....

I would like to have a full planted tank but seem to be struggling, i am willing to try anything to get some success and i really need to provide some sort of cover for my very succesfully endlers and ther non-stop breeding.

I have asked various shops and the advice is its down to luck as to what works, is this true ?

Hope you can help a returnee get some success

 

[lljdma06]

I'll move this over to the Planted section.

 

[mark4785]

Do you have 2x T5 lighting? If so that seems like heavy lighting.

I'm glad you have switched to liquid ferts as not many tab ferts have a full spectrum of nutrients to offer. What is your liquid fert dosing regime like? With that kind of lighting, you'd need a lot of under water flow/movement, an abundance of macro-nutrients (consisting of nitrate, potassium and phosphate) and c02 injection in order to get plants to thrive. I say this because light, as well as temperature, is the thing that controls how fast plants utilise ferts. It might be that you are not dosing enough nutrients and/or c02.

I have asked various shops and the advice is its down to luck as to what works, is this true ?

There can be a trial and error process for some people (like myself) in knowing what you need to do get plants to grow. The only thing that will help you pursue this process is knowledge, not luck.

 

[Lolly123]

You'll prob get more help in the planted section, im new to plants
myself but i'll try and help
So you've got in total 40W of light, what type of lights are they?

Assuming your working on imperial gallons it works out to about 16 gallons, if my calculations are right you have got about 2.5wpg which is a fair amount of light. What i've learned so far is that you got to balance the light output with sufficient co2 and nutrients. If you have an imbalance in one or another it can throw the whole thing off and your plants can suffer and sometimes algae can start to produce quite rapidly. For example in my tank, ive got java fern and anubias, i've got about 2wpg of light and i dose flourish excel and tpn+ daily and then I do a good water change at the end of the week. I cant really comment anymore because I dont want to give you crap info, im sure if you asked the planted guys they will be able to direct you better and hopefully you can start to help your plants survive.