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No idea what to do - poor plant health and algae

Hi all
I would really appreciate if everyone gave their honest opinion about how these plants look. Do they look better or am I being a bit biased? To me they look a lot greener and are definitely growing larger. The leaves of the daughter plants on the frogbit are larger than the leaves on the mother plants. Exciting stuff.
 

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Hi all,
greenbliss said:
Do they look better or am I being a bit biased? To me they look a lot greener and are definitely growing larger. The leaves of the daughter plants on the frogbit are larger than the leaves on the mother plants.
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Yes, they look pretty healthy. That amount of growth (and <"intensity of green coloration">) is a good indication of healthy plants.

cheers Darrel
 
Ok, thanks everyone for your input. I guess I did have an NPK shortage in the end. I'll just keep up this dosing schedule for now and see how it goes.

I honestly want to kick myself now since it turns out it was such a simple issue...
 
Aphids are driving me mad currently. Out of any plant they could attack they are only on the plants in my aquarium?? What can I do other than flick them off the plant leaves or submerge the plants? I have had limited success with maltodextrin but that just seems too polluting to use in an aquarium. They KEEP ON coming back somehow. They are also way too small for my fish to really be interested in, which is really annoying.
 
I'm still having major issues with this aquarium over a year later. I'm almost ready to throw in the towel. It really frustrates me as this aquarium was nice at some points and I've had other planted aquariums which gave me no bother, whether CO2 injected or low tech. I'm going to give it one more try, changing one thing at a time then waiting to see what happens.
 
I do. I had tanks set up using capped pond soil, in my experience they tend grow nice in the beginning an then develop problems. I know there are people that make it work, but maybe the way to go is to get the soil from the outside, rather than commercial with additives. I had problems with PO4 building up stupidly every few weeks. I would need to change 80% of water twice to bring it back to acceptable level. I could not stop the cycle - blue green algae on everything, po4 very high, then I bring it down with massive water changes, it gets better only for few weeks. I broke down that tank. I only knew it was the soil as I had other tanks with just the different substrate. Also the water test kits. They dont need to be precise as some claim.. In my case the readings were on other ends of the scale, so test did the job to tell me what the issue was.
 
I'll see what I can do and if maybe being more consistent with care needs again will help, if not I'll probably end up redoing the tank with something like sand, aquasoil or tesco cat litter. I do remember seeing a guide on UKAPS where someone used the exact same westland pond plant potting soil but iirc they mixed it with peat which I did not. Maybe that caused an issue? But I wouldn't know why that is anyways...
 
I might really soon upgrade and get a larger filter, as well as a CO2 setup. Also maybe some moler clay cat litter or some other relatively inert substrate. I really just want to grow plants and not have to deal with all the fuss, it’s ok if it’s hard work but I just want an aquarium that rewards me for taking care of it. Really demotivating to have an algae filled mess. Just really focus on flow/distribution and see if I can get things going well, then try adding CO2 and more light slowly.
 
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