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Help with plants and nutrient balance

2K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  beaslbob 
#1 ·
Hello all.

I've had my tank up an running over for a little over a year now and I have pretty much been struggling with my plants from day one and I can't figure out if I'm missing something, if my lighting is wrong, or what the deal is.

I'm going to start from May of this year when I decided to change the substrate from Eco Complete to Caribsea Tahitian Moon Sand. I bought a couple new plants (the Amazon swords and Jungle Val) to go with my new set up.

As you can see from the pictures the amazon sword has a lot of browning and transparency on it's leaves, the jungle val keeps turning brown at it's edges and I can't determine if it's from a deficiency or the Seachem Excel. My Vesuvius has suffered since I changed the substrate (It's not a vibrant as it once was and it's not growing anymore). There was even yellowing of a couple leaves on my anubias which never happened before. While most of my plants have stopped turning brown/transparent they are now doing nothing, they're not dying, they're not growing, they're not rooting, they're kind of just there. I did have an outbreak of brown algae so I did a Hydrogen Peroxide treatment (without the fish in the tank) and then did a 75% water change almost a week ago.

I have a 10 gallon divided tank.
The temperature of my tank is around 75F
The pH of my tank is 8.4
Ammonia is 0ppm
Nitrite is 0ppm
Nitrate is 10ppm
I don't have a test kit for GH or KH but we have serious calcium and lime buildup on our faucets so I'm assuming I have pretty hard water.
I have a Finnex planted plus 24/7 that is on 8am-12 and 5-8pm.
I have two sponge filters on either side of my divided tank.

For fertilizers I have Seachem Prime, Excel, Potassium, Trace, Flourish, Nitrogen, and Iron
I dose excel everyday, and follow the directions for the other chemicals. I usually alternate Potassium and Trace on opposite days of Iron, and I haven't really used the Nitrogen since the Nitrate is a little high, nor have I used Flourish since it would be redundant. The only macro I don't have is Phosphate, nor do I have a way to test my phosphate levels.
I do have osmocote root tabs for the root feeding plants, but I haven't noticed a difference.
The only time I ever see oxygen bubbles on the plants is right after a water change.

I have been doing a water change once a week due to high nitrates, but once the Nitrates are back to 0ppm then I could go weeks without a change and still have everything be 0ppm. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

I'm not sure what to do to get my plants healthy. Are the two filters too much for the plants to compete with? Should I change when my lights are on? Is my light strong enough or too strong? Should I get GH, KH, and Phosphorus test kits?
I'm so lost, how can I figure out what I'm missing?

I'll probably have to throw out the amazon swords or see if I can salvage it with new growth. I'm hoping to get new growth on all of the plants so I can toss the older plants and start over with the new ones.
 

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#2 ·
Have you considered trying a dirt tank? It is a lot less maintenance and works great. I just set up my first one a few weeks ago after my local club had one of its members present on how and why it works with a demonstration on how to do it. In three weeks I was able to harvest about 50 stems of cardamine lyrata (I put in about 30) and doubled the number of scarlet temple and have seen significant growth on every type of plant in there.

The basics are as follows, put down a 1 inch layer of dirt (yes, dirt, like from the backyard) then a similar layer of non clumping cat litter (oil dry works too) then a gravel or sand cap. Fill the tank so as not to disturb the layers then plant heavily (I used a 40 breeder and planted approximately 6 stems of hygrophila stricta, a dozen crypt usteriana, 6 stems of anacharis densa, 15 sagitarria sublata, 3 scarlet temple stems, 5 wisteria stems, a few pieces of naja grass, a java fern, and a stem of rotala rotundifolia plus the already mentioned cardamine). AFter a day heavily stock with fish- I added 15 juvenile EB acaras, 3 cory cats, 2 myers loaches and a sheldford's loach, 4 nezzie swords and a paradise fish. I was amazed at the results as I have only had moderate success with plants in the past.
 
#3 ·
#4 ·
Gulogulo: I just changed the substrate in my tank so I'm not quite sure I'm ready to do it again so soon, but I will think about changing to a dirt tank the next time I do an overhaul.

Beaslbob: Your method is interesting, but I don't think I'd be able to do something like that for a while. I'm a college student and I move my tank twice a year to wherever I'll be living for the school year. In spite of my best efforts, the tank gets jostled in the moving process which tends to disturb the substrate and uproot plants (it's very annoying), so I'm not sure I would be able to maintain your type of tank until I get settled somewhere more permanently.

In both of your suggestions you guys stock the tank rather heavily. I only have my two bettas in the tank, and I would like to keep it that way. Will these two methods still work with only two fish in the tank?

I also went out and got a couple more test kits, so here are the results:

KH: 15 degrees
GH: 22 degrees
Phosphates: 2.0ppm

My tap water is only slightly higher than the reading in the tank by 2 or 3 degrees for the KH and GH, and it is 1ppm less for the phosphate.
 
#5 ·
My runs a little lower than those values with fh of 4 degrees and gh of 9 degrees.
With no peat moss in the substrate both values rose to high values and I had trouble keeping neon tetras.


These methods will work with smaller amounts of fish with the only effect being the plants grow slower.


Understand about having to move while in college. Hopefully after college when you rich and famous you try a beaslbob build over in the corner. LOL


best tank ever
 
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