Help With Plants

[AMcGregor]

Hi,
 
I really struggle to keep any sort of plants looking nice in my tank and i'm looking for advise on how to improve this. I am unsure if using my current set up I can go to a fully planted tank, or if I would need to keep similar to how it is.
 
the tank is a 180 litre one, and currently has a tetratec ex700 filter but soon to have the Eheim 2078 fitted.
 
I have attached some photos of the current set up, you will see my leaves turn black, and my plants just don't grow. I have tried many sorts of plants, but I end up usually removing and binning them after 4 weeks or so when they tend to just die. I do add some plant nutrients (seachem flourish I think?) 
 
For lighting I have 2 different tubes. One tropical colour and one daylight, both 36w with diffusers to direct the light.
 
I have absolutely no experience with plants, knowing if my lighting is ok or anything so any info would be a great help!
 
thanks
 
 

sorry I cant add any more photos
I have worked it out

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[snazy]

Plants need not only light but CO2 and nutritients to grow. The more light given, the more CO2 and nutritients the plants will demand and if not there, they'll suffer and die. These should be distributed around the tank by good circular flow.
I think first of all you may want to reduce the light intensity. You can achieve that by removing the reflectors for example. Second, you may want to invest in some micro nutritients as a start and dose some for the plants. The other option is to convert your tank to high tech, which means also providing a source of CO2 additionally as the amount produced naturally is normally not enough, and also adding macro nutritients in that case too.
 
Just read and read about planted tanks to understand what they need.

 

[AMcGregor]

Hi,
 
why would I want to reduce the light intensity?
 
which micro nutrients would you recommend for the beginner?
 
also if I was to go for a lot of low level light plant, I think I have some already, would I still need to add co2? I have no experience with co2 at all so I will need to go and do some research on it and installing into the tank.

 

[DrRob]

Hi,
 
why would I want to reduce the light intensity?
 
which micro nutrients would you recommend for the beginner?
 
also if I was to go for a lot of low level light plant, I think I have some already, would I still need to add co2? I have no experience with co2 at all so I will need to go and do some research on it and installing into the tank.

 
As snazy said, they more light, the faster the plants use nutrients. Plants are more complex than algae so suffer badly from nutrient starvation, so when nutrients do reenter the system (generally via fish waste or water changes) the algae is first to mop it up, so you get algal growth and dying plants. Ramping back the lights reduces the overall demand so that the balance returns and the plants thrive. Healthy plants will strip the nutrients more efficiently than the algae and the algae is the one that dies back.
 
I tend to think of the light level like the accelerator on a car, the more light the faster things go, the faster things also go wrong. Nutrients, starting with micronutrients found in most simple aquarium fertilisers and then CO2 and macronutrients (the NPK stuff) are the extra fuel needed to keep up these high demand levels.
 
Essentially you have a tank with plenty of light demand but not enough fuel to feed it, you have the option to stabilise the fuel levels or to reduce the demand.

 

[snazy]

why would I want to reduce the light intensity?
 

 
Dr. Rob explained it all. I'll ask you a question instead if I may. Why do you want to keep higher levels of light? Plants grow in a lot less light than what used to be thought before.
And basically, there's a limitation in planted tanks in regards to how much light one can provide, because of the high demand for CO2 and nutritients this creates. The nutritient part is easy, as one can heavily overdose without affecting the fish. However, you can't dose more than let's say 30ppm of CO2 depending on the tank without actually gassing your fish. Therefore there can be a situation when one can't provide the required by the plants amount of CO2 to a tank in any form, without killing the fish.
 
In your case you don't have such high levels of light as in the above example I was giving but I just wanted to explain how it works. But you aren't even dosing ferts or supplementing with any form of CO2 like pressurized or liquid carbon. Therefore reducing the light will reduce the demand. Also, if I have to compare, you've got about the same amount of light on a non-fertilzed tank as I do in double the size of your tank, but fertilized/liquid carbon.  So logically you'll have algae with that amount of light not feeding the demands of the plants but even if you do add micro ferts, you face the carbon dioxide problem too. So it's your choice which way to go, decrease the light and dose just ferts and see if that will balance it out, or keep the light and think about adding a source of CO2. Keep in mind that liquid carbon is far less efficient than pressurized CO2. It's also toxic to fish in higher amounts so you can't put as much as plants need(so is pressurized CO2 in high amounts). It's toxic to some species of plants too and obviously toxic to humans if you decide to wash your hands with it or drink it. You need a good flow to spread the co2 and ferts efficiently in a planted tank too otherwise what you dose will stay in just the one spot.

 

[AMcGregor]

ok point taken, but there is that much conflicting information on the web I don't know which to believe. I have heard the standard was to get to about 2wpg?
 
I would prefer not to go down the route of co2
 
Anyway, am I better off then just removing one of the tubes and running with the one? I have just been using both as the tank came setup for 2 tubes. if I do remove 1 tube should I remove the tropical tube or the natural daylight tube. or both and buy another one?
 
I will look into nutrients and get some.

 

[snazy]

ok point taken, but there is that much conflicting information on the web I don't know which to believe. I have heard the standard was to get to about 2wpg?
 

 
You already have tried with the amount of light you have and you are covered in algae. What sort of other proof do you want? You can also put floating plants, like salvinia, amazon frogbit, water lettuce, etc.. to difuse some light. Decrease the light period to max 6-7 hours for a start as well and leave it like that until you fight the algae off and plants start growing. You can start with one tube until you conquer the algae, but in time you'd need slightly more, hence why I said remove the reflectors as this will decrease the intensity a lot and give you something in the middle which maybe ok. And don't forget that that algae would need manual removal, so be prepared to trim quite a bit.
 
The light intensity very much depends on the type of tubes you have as for example T5 HO are stronger than normal T5s, but all of them are stronger than T8s and most LEDs are stronger than any other type of light, so wattage isn't relevant at all.