[frankiefire]

Can anyone tell me what is wrong with my sword plants? Some of the leaves are turning black and getting holes in them. All of my other plants are doing great. I do a 8 hour light period. I have 2.4 watts per gallon of 6500k lighting. My ph is 7.8. I have root tabs and dose flourish twice a week. No co2. I've attached pics of the leaves and one of my whole tank just for kicks. lol.

 

[frankiefire]

I just want to add that the black will not rub off the leaves so I'm not sure if it's algea.

 

[Boredomb]

It is algae. Looks like a form of brush algae to me or BBA.

 

[frankiefire]

Any ideas how to stop it? It's only forming on my swords. All the other plants are doing great. Should I maybe knock the flourish down to once a week, or cut down my light period? My other swords are doing good in my very low light tanks.

 

[Boredomb]

The Algae that's already there is there. There only way to get rid of it is to cut the leaves off that have I on it. There are ways to stop it from spreading. These algaes tend to grow on slower growing plants so I makes since that its on the sword and not your stems. The first thing I would do is cut back the hours of light to 7hrs and wait a couple of weeks to see what happens. Patience is the name of the game here. The idea is to stop the spread of it. Once you have done that you can get rid of the of the effective leaves since it will eventually kill them anyways if they get too covered up. If that doesn't help you can cut back on the flourish. You can even cut the hours down more but I wouldn't go any less then 6hrs a day.