No Luck Growing Plants?

[Thomasino]

Hey guys,
My friend recently bought a Cade aquarium after selling his AquaOne Euroview 90. In the 90, he didn't have too much luck growing plants. He had a few different ones, but mainly swords. They reached a steady state where they weren't dying off, but no new growth was coming. Now he only has swords as the aquarium is relatively new, and his swords are not doing well at all. The leaves are starting to brown, get patches, and the crown/base of the stems is turning quite brown. He had some Java moss which was doing well but he only had it attached to his drift wood with one loop of fishing line, so it ended up getting loose and he binned it.
He has a CO2 setup running, unsure on how many hours per day but I believe its about 1 bubble per second. I'm not sure of his levels either, but he has two BN catfish and RCS living in the tank for a month or two now. Today we noticed one dead shrimp.
I'm not sure how well he cycled it, or what method he used, but the catfish and shrimp seem to be fine apart form that one dead one.

Here's some photos of the plants:
Shortly after planting:

Today:

Sorry for the iPhone quality photos. His twin brother still has his 90 and without CO2 his plants are going crazy (using Flourish liquid carbon). The Cade tank has some fert under his 3mm gravel. He says there's no new growth coming from the swords and if anything does come up it just dies being getting to a decent size anyway. He has quite a few snails in the tank (when I saw quite a few, I mean it looks horrible with so many of these tiny little spots getting around everywhere!). He is also using Flourish.

If anyone could offer an explanation as to whats up, as the only thing we can think of is natural sunlight, as he gets a little more then his brother. Thanks for any help!
Tom.

 

[Jman14698]

Is he using full spectrum lighting? How many k is the lighting? How many watts per gallon? In the second picture there seems to be algae on the leaf. In my experience algae can hurt some plants. Without all the perameters for water quality it is hard to say what happening.

 

[Fyurae]

I doubt the algae is doing much harm. It might just be melt. A lot of plants shed their current leaves when the water parameters change. Be patient. The light looks pa-lenty bright, so as long as it isn't a ridiculous spectrum (which it likely isn't), that should be okay. I would bet that once the leaves get to about half-dissolved, you'll see all kinds of new leaves coming up.

 

[minnnt]

Swords are notoriously difficult to grow for some people. ColdCazzie couldn't grow them for love nor money. I would go with very simple plants such as Anubias Barteri, Anubias Barteri Nana, Java Ferns, various Crypts etc.

Ensure he is limiting his lighting to 7-8 hours a day and no more. 6 would probably be better until he has got the algae under control.

Also the decaying leaves will be causing algae problems of their own. I would remove the swords, donate them to his brother and start out fresh with some of the plants listed above. This will also give more dimension, more texture and more colours to the tank. Use Vallis towards the back to give height too.

Has he any means to test the water? He may need to check for ammonia in the water due to the planted substrate that he has used.

On the upside, i love the gravel!!!

 

[RadaR]

Is he using full spectrum lighting? How many k is the lighting? How many watts per gallon? In the second picture there seems to be algae on the leaf. In my experience algae can hurt some plants. Without all the perameters for water quality it is hard to say what happening.

They clearly have enough light and kelvin is irrelevant to plant growth.
Algae don't "hurt plants". The algae will be on the plant because the plant is experiencing poor health. Unhealthy plants leach ammonia which attracts algae spores to bloom on the surface of the leaf. Obviously this doesn't help the plants (I guess you could take it as "hurtng") because it will restrict the surface area the plant has for gas exchange and absorbing light.

Looks like lack of nutrients to me.
More light increases the demand for CO2. More CO2 increases the demand for nutrients (all the macro and micro nutrients). Why? Because the plant's metabolism has rapidly increased.
Dosing EI or an all in one fert plus 50% weekly water changes should improve the situation.
Manual removal of infected leaves and algae is advised.

 

[stu40]

The algae will be on the plant because the plant is experiencing poor health. Unhealthy plants leach ammonia which attracts algae spores to bloom on the surface of the leaf.

Is this always the case? 2 examples from my own humble tank are

1.Vallis: Sometimes you can practically see this growing, in terms of current stems length & new ones being produced.Plus it sends out runners, and yet the longer stems that have spread along the surface have algae.I wouldn't say it's an unhealthy plant.

2.Anubias. I've recently got this to flower, something an unhealthy plant wouldn't do.Yet some leaves on this have algae.

In both cases, is the algae not down to too much light for the plant in question, rather than its health.

Apologises if i've miss understood your point.

 

[RadaR]

With regards to anubias leaves, they can be targetted by algae because of their slow growing nature. The algae has already bloomed in the tank and the slow growing leaf surface is an appropriate place to adhere to.
Sometimes old leaves or damaged leaves will attract algae but again thats because they're potentially not recieveing everything they need. It takes less energy to build a new leaf than to try regenerate an old one so the plant concentrates more on the new leaves. Its not a problen though because pruning is healthy so just remove old, tired leaves. At the end of the day (hate that saying), a healthy planted system should have no issues with algae.

 

[stu40]

Its not a problen though because pruning is healthy so just remove old, tired leaves.

Always do.Surprising how quickly a new one is thrown out afterwards.