From Amazing, To A Bit Rubbish!

[Rorie]

About a month or two ago i decided to plant my small 90L aquarium as a lowtech tank. I did not want to use ferts or anything.

I put a plant fertiliser type substrate down, then my gravel substrate on top. I then got a load of plants from Last-trading post on ebay.

My tank flurished! everything was growing at 100 miles an hour and i ended up with the tank shown below.

BUT, over the past couple weeks, my plants have been getting a lot of holes in. Brown holes. Some of my stem plants rotted at the base and they lifted out. I tried cutting them and replanting, but the same thing happened.

SO, whats up? Could it be that the fertilising substrate fuelled the plants at the start, but have now run out?

 

[PDSimon]

What plant substrate was it? Some like tropica absorb nutrients so that they can give them off...

It sounds to me like a deficiency of some sort of nutrients. Which I don't know...

I think its becoming quite common for this to happen...maybe the nutrients start to run out, i'm not sure but holes in plants is often caused by a nutrient deficiency.

 

[StandbySetting]

Sounds like a Macro deficiency, probably Nitrogen and Potassium from the symptoms you describe, pick up a fertiliser which will address the problem, the stems could be starving themselves of light also.

 

[PDSimon]

TPN+ would cover all bases

 

[Ps3Steveo]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I second that, the stems being fast growing will use up everything in the tank quicker so you really need to dose to save them.