plants

[chrisski]

im struggling with my plants! not sure of names but i have some that have lots of small needle type leaves which keep flaking off other plants are long thin ones that keep going thin and die! how can i solve this planting pain? use plastic ones instead???

 

[Jen]

Hi, and welcome to the forum!

To help us figure out what is wrong, it will help us if we know what kind of lighting you have on the tank.

How long have you been keeping fish?

 

[chrisski]

lighting on top of tank! not sure precise details! its a jewel 60tank!

 

[Jen]

Ok. so just 1 bulb. Probably less than 20 watts. That'll be one of your problems. Without knowing exactly what kind of plant it is, we don't know what environment it needs- high light or low light. Are you able to take a picture of it?

 

[zig]

lighting on top of tank! not sure precise details! its a jewel 60tank!

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haha......well that explains quite a lot.

I have one of those tanks as well and the light that comes standard with them is absolutely usless for growing anything, i also found that the light itself for viewing purposes was quite yellow.

Id recommend you buy an Interpet Daylight Plus 15 watt tube, this is a much whiter light (better for viewing) and also the perfect spectrum for growing plants at 6500k.

The tank itself is 15 US gallons, so with only a 15 watt tube you have 1 watt per gallon, this is considered low light, you could try some low light plants and you may have a lot more success than you are having now, these would include, Anubias, Java Fern, Java moss, and some Cryptocoryne species can do well at low light levels.

But 1 watt per gallon is quite low the only way to imrove this is to add more tubes, and thats not easy on Juwel tanks, but if you look in the DIY section some people have upgraded sucessfully, just do a search.

There are other tubes you could also use other than the above but i found that one good for viewing also as well as plants.

You could also have a look at gf225s pinned article on lighting at the top of this section of the forum and that will give you a much better idea as to how different levels of light are needed to grow different plants.

Anyway hope that helps, just avoid buying plants that require a lot of light and you should do a lot better.