Trouble with my carpet plants

[mess17]

Hi everyone,

i've recently rescaped my tank, and added sand. think this caused a breakout of diatoms which have now gone, however the marsilea hirsuta at the foreground of my tank appear to still be struggling, there is new plant growth coming through but the older leaves are looking good (see photos).

I inject co2 and use one pump of tropica specialised nutrition every 3 days. I recently popped in some root tabs too as wondered if the soil (tropica soil powder) had run out of nutrients (not sure if this is a thing). Run the built in light on the fluval flex 9g for 8 hours a day. I've also been wondering if the light isn't good enough, as having pretty poor plant growth of bacopa caroliana in the background. One of the full tank shots I'll add is at full light intensity and you can still very much see my reflection in the glass.

Any tips or advice on what might be going on would be very much appreciated, also appreciate the glass is a bit algae covered, maintenance is planned in for this evening

Matt

 

[Wookii]

I suspect 2ml every three days might not be enough ferts on a 34 litre high tech tank. Try upping to one pump per day, and see if you note any improvements after a couple of weeks.

Also if the colour of your drop checker is typical you are not injecting enough CO2 - you want a nice lime green colour like the first in these three, for the entire photo period:

From this UKAPS article: CO2 Measurement Using A Drop Checker

 

[mess17]

yeah tended to keep my drop checker on the darker side of green through not wanting to gas my livestock, but will try upping the bubbles a a bit as well as increasing the ferts. Could this not cause more algae however, or will the added co2 and ferts only benefit the plant growth to out-compete the algae?