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Struggling to grow healthy plants

bennell

Member
Joined
21 Nov 2014
Messages
36
Location
Manchester, United Kingdom
Evening all,

Hopefully posting in the correct secion but basically im struggling to grow nice healthy plants. Ill try keeping this short so here goes my specs

Tank: Juwel 125l (30g us)
Temp: 23°c
Lighting: 1x T8 @ 30w 6700k on for 10h per day 12 till 10pm
Co2 inject: @ ~ 30ppm
EI dosing: Daily micro one day macro the next ( wednesday day off)
50% pwc every wednesday
Fluval u3 with a mini powerhead(350lph) for additional flow
________________________________
Ammonia :0
Nitrate:40
Nitrite:0
Ph 6.2ish
Kh: unknown
Gh: unknown
_______________________________

FLORA:

Dwarf hairgrass
Hygro difformis 8 stems
Hygro polysperma 10 stems
Lindernia rotundifolia 10 stems
Hygrophila angustifolia 10 stems
Amazon sword x2
Staurogyne repens 5 stems
7 smallish moss balls

FAUNA:

10X rummy nose
8X white cloud minnows
4X long fin danios
4X albeno cory
2X glowlight rasabora
2X rosey tetra
1X male betta
3X amano shrimp

My fish are all getting along swimmingly i fact one of the most relaxed peacful setups ive had in 10yrs despite the strange mix...my plants are another subject.

All my plants-mainly the sword are browning round the edges. My difformis, nearly every leaf has brown edges.
Hair grass is growing well new shoots every day infact and spreading well.
Polysperma is growing but leafs slightly see through and curling.
My angustifolia is growing but leafs are again browning and some are patchy.
The worst plant is my amazon sword. New leafs have brown veins, see through and are crumpled :(

I do have diatoms which i think are causing the leaf browning round the edges but the patchyness and glass like leafs im unsure of.
I use root tabs under each plant to provide substate ferts for the sword and stem plant also.

What would tou gus suggest is the culprit? Im going to low my light to 8h but i feel i need more wattage

Ph is another worry as its 7 from the tap but in the tank with co2 it drops to 6?

Help would be appreciated...pics to follow
 
A single T8 is quite low light, but I don't think browning edges and and translucent leaves are a sign of not enough light. And 10 hours is a very long light period, not surprised you have algae! So yeah I definitely agree with mr. manj^
 
8 hrs is still plenty, a lot of people reduce to 6 or even 4 hrs to deal with problems, esp algea related.
How are you 'measuring' Co2? You state 30ppm, but your plants are telling you they aren't happy. Have you tried measuring ph drop?
 
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Im using my drop checker which is a nice green colour, if anything its on its way to a lime colour which could be over 30ppm give or take. Im planning on measuring my ph in the morning just before the co2 kicks back is to see what the drop is. I dont uderstand the big drop from 7 out of the tap down to 6 in the tank (during co2 injection) i have 1 peice of red moor and some slate looking rock
 
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i wish i had your soft water. it would be a blessing. shitty thames water is so hard. mines at 258 gh. when i started planting i had many many problems

brown and string algae on my plants
algae on the walls
java moss was dying. Yes i was able to kill some of my java moss because of ammonia burns
zero growth with fast growing stem plants
hydra in a cycling tank (had no idea it was possible since they always come up when there is alot of food but i had no fish and my tank was cycling because of the aqa soil)

my solution to all these problems was simple. i dosed the recommended dosage of excel
had my 2 t5 bulbs on a timer for 10 hours
25 -35% water changes every other day
increased the circulation and surface agitation by using a spare HOB filter.

results- my plants are pearling none stop
zero algae on the walls
2% algae on plants mostly on the bottom java moss because it picks up the detritus. soon i will get cherry shrimp which will eat it
my moss is so green and thick it looks like i have a carpet in the middle of my tank
have to trim plants every month

heck i was even able to resurrect two dead yes dead java ferns i got from gumtree. they were in a horrible state. the guy i got them of said it hasnt been growing for 2 years. not its producing plant lets and very green leaves.

that simple routine has solved every problems in my tank
 
also im new to this forum. so could you guys tell me how to post a picture
 
Whats the advantages of soft water though? I upload my pics to photobucket, copy the image url then click the "add photo" button next to the emoticon just above your text and paste the url in there
 
cheers for that. i wanted the soft water because of the fish im getting lol. someone did tell me the benefit once but i forgot. i do know that in low ph water there is more ammonium and less ammonia. ammonium is used by the plants.
 
I wanted the soft water because of the fish im getting lol
Fish and plants don't care about water hardness (well OK some rarer fish might do), so completely wrong reason for getting softer water.

Aquascapers often use RO water (cut with tap water) so they have controllable & fixed water parameters to work with. There are some fantastic tanks with fine plants and healthy breeding fish all using water as hard as rock.
 
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