First planted tank...advice needed.

[Dudefish]

Week 1

Week one by Dudefish

Week 3

Planted tank by Dudefish

Week 3 another angle.

Aquarium by Dudefish, on Flickr

Week 3 another angle

Fish tank by Dudefish

The brown on the stones are diatoms, I think. Annoying, but are starting to slow down, I have DIY CO2 which is proving a pain to get settled, in the first week I could not get the drop checker to go green, no matter what I did, now I keep finding a yellow reading in the morning even when I put the Lilly pipe braking the surface. I have since scaled back to one 2ltr mix instead of two, see if this works. I also have Pygmy chain in there which does not seem to be growing well, substrate has tabs in, I dose Potassium, Nitrogen, iron and trace, I stopped dosing sulphate when the diatoms broke and I realised my nitrate test kit didn't work.
All other plants seem to be doing really well except the Pygmy chain, any ideas?
It seems to be putting out runners, I have new shoots but a lot of it seems to be yellowish brown and weak. I trimmed it back quite a lot to try and get rid of the brown / yellow but it's not got the growth of the rest of the plants or the colour or the health.

[EnigmaticGuppy92]

wonder why the chain is like that are the shoots discoloured?? i had one in my 8 gal that was yellow but the new runners had fresh green shoots

[Dudefish]

Runners have bright green shoots, but then they go a brown colour before they are an inch long. Not all are like this some, which seem to be in the shade (under the tree) are still nice and green. ???

[EnigmaticGuppy92]

are you sure that you added tabs to the substrate in that area ??

[Dudefish]

Put one root tab every 6-8 inches across the substrate, this resulted in 1 tab under the middle of each chain bed. Although I did pull up one of the Hygrophila yesterday to move it and the bottom of the stem was black and rotten, I don't understand why that happened either, it was nowhere near the chain, it was on the far left of the tank, and it had new shoots bright green, and even red leaves at the top, all looked really healthy until I up rooted it?

[EnigmaticGuppy92]

root rot it can be caused by anaerobic conditions below the substrate try getting some malaysian trumpet snails to aerate the substrate

[Dudefish]

Will they not uproot the plants?

[EnigmaticGuppy92]

no they weill not bother the plants they will consume decaying matter and detritus build up and aerate the substrate

[Dudefish]

How many? Do they bread like mad? And are they an unsightly PITA? Also is it hard to get rid of them if you want to?

[LB79]

They are extremely cool looking, and will not overrun the tank unless they have too much food. They are impossible to get rid of, but then, I've never really tried.

[EnigmaticGuppy92]

internet search them they do look cool and are relativity cheap i got some of the internet for like £3.50 for 20 you also rarely see them in the day as they are buried beneath the substrate

[acitydweller]

MTS aid in aerating the substrate as they churn and sift through it. they bury themselves in it and come out for feeding. If your feeding is not overdone, your mts population wont get out of hand. i have attempted this with two tanks side by side, one with cherrys that i feed daily, and another with crystal shrimp which i feed maybe every fourth day... the MTS in the daily feed has profound births.

They'll definitely be a cleaning crew worth having in all tanks.

[Dudefish]

I have wanted to steer clear of snails, but suppose I need something to turn the sand.

[sugarbyte]

What is that plant you have with the whitish lines? It looks a lot like the non-aquatic plants that some chain stores sell. I may be completely wrong though! Just giving you a heads up just in case

[Aquarist14]

What type of sand are you using?

By the way, It's a great start!