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Dissolving base up

Joined
27 Oct 2009
Messages
2,919
Location
Cumbria
What would cause certain plants like Bacopa Caroliniana to dissolve starting from the base , lighting perhaps? The plants have only been in 3 week so could possibly be die back, It only appears to affect certain plants. Some that I have lost the name of went black on the stem and I only have a couple of heads left floating in the tank to try and get them back to life and the Bacopa lower leaves dissolve yet the stem seems fairly healthy, even cuttings I have taken grow so far then loose the bottom leaves.
They are in a sand substrate which after reading an article in here I gave a good raking to loosen up in case it had compacted too much but this seems to have caused a bit of blue/green algae mostly on the sand which contains small bubbles.
 
I have a 165ltr Tank with sand gravel mix substrate. The lighting is 2x30watt and 1x25watt flourescent tubes which I appreciate is quite low.
I recnetly modified the lid by using foil as a reflector and polished up the yellowing on the perspex cover but due to it being a systemised aqaurium I'm sort of stuck lighting wise.
I do have a full range of dry ferts ready but since I had just bought some leaf zone my regime has been the weekly rec dosage of LZ but twice a week with a tip of a teaspoon of nitrate and phosphate on the same day as the LZ sat/wed. I'm going to change this as soon as it runs out no point wasting it :)
I also change 6gall of water once a fortnight with weekly trimming of plants.
Its interesting you should mention co2 has I've been struggling to maintain the correct levels, I have reduced the amount of time that the lights are on two 8hrs but still no help.
In theory CO2 shouldn't be a problem as the diffuser is for a lot larger tank than mine and my water is very soft not even 2KH. The only thing I can think of is the wet dry filter de-gassing the water or possibly dropper giving false reading. I usually leave the dropper for the full 2 week between water changes but I've just changed it today (not changing water today) to see if it gives the same result.
 
*Updated*
Getting some weird results from my Red Sea test kit :? After leaving my tank for one week the drop checker goes into the blue it seems regardless of the amount of co2 that I put in. To check this after one week when the dropper is blue I do a fresh test which on the same day goes green but the next morning is bright yellow, this then gradually goes back to blue any suggestions?
 
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