Question on newly planted 55 gallon tank?
 

I have a newly planted tank, about 5-6 weeks now. It is low tech, 3 32w 6500k bulbs for lights and only dosing with excel once a day.

My plants have started getting brown tips at ends of leaves and I'm getting alot of brown type buildup on some leaves. I have some vallisneria and microswords and a bunch of diff types of anubias. We have hard water with a ph around 8-8.2. I have some driftwood and probable need more to drop ph some more. Is the high ph the problem with plants? or ami doing something else wrong or need to do? Keeping water temp around 80 since I have angels and german blue rams in tank.

Any helps and suggestions appreciated. Oh, and is there anything that can clean the leaves of the plants? the brown type buildup on some leaves is not very attractive. It seems mostly built up on the vallisneria and microswords.

Are the actual leaves turning brown or is it just gunk on the leaves?

Since your tank is new it may be diatoms or brown algae.
If its gunk, does it wipe off easily?

The tips on some of the plants are definitely dying back. The brown gun all over on other plants are fuzzy and wipe off but with difficulty. The fuzzy stuff is mostly on the valls and microswords.

Are you adding fertilizers? Also, the plants could still adjusting to your hard water conditions. As for any Brown Diatoms on the plant leaves, pop in a few otocinclus http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/my...nclus_vittatus

No fertilizers just flurish excel. Should i add fertilizer?

What light fixture are you using, a shop light, for example? And, what is the substrate? A substrate that lacks any nutrients works, but you then need to dose NPK and trace elements.