Wisteria Dying

[NeonRob]

I have a 55 gallon planted tank with 2x54W T5 running 9 hours per day. Excel is dosed every other day. No macro or micro dosing. 50% water changes every 2 weeks of local tap water (liquid rock). The tank has been setup for 3 months now. My Water Wisteria was growing like crazy and then a few weeks ago it seems to be slowly dying away. Crypt wendtii, java ferns, & Hydrocotyle 'japan' are doing great. I do not overfeed. I'm baffled why the Wisteria is doing so badly since it's supposed to be an easy plant to keep.

Does anybody have any ideas why the plant isn't doing well as of lately and/or possible suggestions to get it back into good looking shape?

Water parameters

Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: ~10 ppm
pH: 8.2
dGH: 12
dKH: 10
TDS: 564 ppm

Bioload

2 Red rainbows
2 blue katubu rainbows
2 knight gobys
2 roseline sharks
2 zebra danios
2 chinese algae eaters
1 cory
1 small pleco
1 dwarf rainbow

[tomfromstlouis]

If it is browning a bit I'd say it is not getting enough macro ferts. As you know, it can be a rapid grower and does like to suck down nutrients, so I'd consider dosing some nitrates etc.

Just dosing CO2 without the other ferts suggests you are limiting plant growth by restricting those nutrients and my experience with wisteria is that it shows that kind of shortage visibly. Your wisteria took what it found and is now starving for more.

[mitchfish9]

ya you should definitely start dosing. Like tom said the excel makes it want more nutrients

[STS_1OO]

Had the same problem with Wisteria. It's an aquatic weed and as such, a nitrate hog. It basically grew so large that it starved to death (well of course I didn't add ferts but that was the intention of the tank). This was in a heavily planted and heavily stocked tank.

When it did go through this phase, it looked similar to yours and had mats of roots growing at all levels of the stem(s).

I do not recommend this plant for low-tech tanks that do not have a regular fert regime. It looks great growing but then it outgrows such a tank's nitrate levels.

[NeonRob]

Thanks for all of the replies. I will begin dosing macros immediately.

[tomfromstlouis]

Originally Posted by STS_1OO

...I do not recommend this plant for low-tech tanks that do not have a regular fert regime. It looks great growing but then it outgrows such a tank's nitrate levels.

This is precisley what I am doing (for now) in my 220 - using the wisteria to get through the algae phase of a start up tank with no ferts other than fish load - hoping to yank it all at some point. I regularly trim it to keep it from outgrowing its nutrients. It gets the brightest light and the hanging roots really seem to filter well.