Plants Not Growing/ Dieing?

[Sask Aquarist]

I have several different types of plants in my tank (Not sure of the names but pics of the tank in the members tank forum) they're planted in some finer gravel. For my lighting i just have my stock t8 20w bulb life-glo. The tank is a 35 gallon. For some reason my plants aren't growing at all and some of them are brown and see-through thin, which i assume is dieing. Is it from lack of light, nutrients or just bad substrate choice? I really want them to green up and get bigger.

 

[Katch]

Are you using any ferts?

How many fish are you keeping?

How long is your light cycle?

My immediate guess is lack of nutrients but you also have pretty low lighting.

You could start dosing a liquid fert into the water and/or place root tabs (little tablets of nutrients) in your substrate under the plants.

The better option is to use a nutrient rich substrate to start with like Aquasoil.

 

[Sask Aquarist]

Are you using any ferts?

How many fish are you keeping?

How long is your light cycle?

My immediate guess is lack of nutrients but you also have pretty low lighting.

You could start dosing a liquid fert into the water and/or place root tabs (little tablets of nutrients) in your substrate under the plants.

The better option is to use a nutrient rich substrate to start with like Aquasoil.

I've been dosing ferts for about a week and my light cycle is about... 10-15 hours of daylight. I did a huge upgrading to my light today

Huge increase compared to what my old bulb did. Gives off nothing for heat to.

 

[Katch]

Get your light cycle down to a regular 8 or 9 hours - use a timer on the plug sockets.

I'm still not sure your lighting is good enough. See how it goes for a week or 2 and watch for any signs of new growth.

 

[Sask Aquarist]

Get your light cycle down to a regular 8 or 9 hours - use a timer on the plug sockets.

I'm still not sure your lighting is good enough. See how it goes for a week or 2 and watch for any signs of new growth.

So i should only be doing about 8 or 9 hours of lights on for a day?

Each of those bulbs is 1600 lumens. @ 23 Watts

 

[Katch]

lumens tells you nothing about the amount of photosynthetic light produced (PAR) -

see how it goes - don't add too much fert and get your photoperiod down as suggested 10 hours is really the max people use on planted tanks.

 

[Sask Aquarist]

Some of the plants seem to be growing well but on the majority there's brown spots and holes like you'd see on garden lettuce after its been chewed up by some insect. There always more to the middle of the plant and very spread out looks like little brown spheres all over my plants