New to the hobby and looking for some advise

[hunterheath]

Hey everyone, first time poster here.

So I've just gotten into the hobby (It hasn't quite been a year) and I seem to be struggling to keep my plants healthy and thriving.

I've currently got a 10g tank that I'm trying to grow healthy plants. I am new so I want to master a good low tech tank before I get in over my head with high tech CO2 systems and all that.

I started off with just plain old gravel, 2 15w incandescent ligrhts, and some wisteria that grew like a weed. everything was going pretty well until I wanted to add a little variety to the tank....

I decided to get some crypts, green cabomba, banana plants, lagwuigia, and maybe a few other plants. all of which would last for a couple of weeks before rotting up the stems and eventually die completely.

after doing some research I decided my substrate and lighting was probably less than Ideal. I switch up the lighting to some CF and changed the substrate to floramax. Still plants continued to melt and die. Recently I've started dosing ferts as well.

My setup currently:
10g (standard size)
2 10w marineland natural daylight flouresent lights (5100K) on 8 hours a day
floramax substrate
HOB aquatech filter
water temp 76ish
6 fish
20-30% weekly water changes
as of the past two weeks dosing excel and leaf zone plant food as recommended by instructions

My questions are:
Too much/ not enough light?
too much/ not enough nutrients?
Anything I should change to keep my plants healthier?

Below are some pics to help show ya'll what I'm dealing with.


I had re-scaped my tank with new plants


after about 3-4 months and a couple of new plants to replace the dying ones, everything seems to just not be thriving


my current lighting set up

[Ganyon]

You could try pumping co2 for them. I have a 10g with 30w of light on it and my plants do great. I don't pump co2, dont do any fert, and don't have any special substrate. I just let the tank do its own thing. Its been set up for 2 months and i haven't done a single water change.

[gordonrichards]

Remove those light guards from the hood, they are diffusing some of the light produced by the bulbs. I removed those years ago without any issues.

Aside from that you don't need excel in your tank. There aren't enough plants for it to make sense. If anyone is going to say its needed they are nuts!

Keep up with your fertilizer, and don't do so much of of a weekly water change, it looks like you have light stocking in your tank so there shouldn't be much of a problem. Fish poop will start to provide some nutrients to your tank.

Try switching to a gallon water change every 2 weeks. If the tank gets stanky smelling then do more of a water change. If it starts to smell in 2 weeks you're also probably feeding the fish too much!

My lazy rule : Tanks should never smell like a fish tank.

-Gordon

[In.a.Box]

no need to co2... with your low light and small tank just stick what what you are doing.
excel here and there.

[Gplus]

I'm sure those light guards are part of the problem. I'd agree with taking the light guards off as their blocking a lot of light. I had a 10g back in the day and I removed those light guards as well. Just remember to use a bit of electric grease or something along the lines on the bulb threads. Without those guards the light sockets can get rather crusty.

[hunterheath]

ok so besides the light covers, anything else you guys would recommend?

[kamikazi]

IME ludwigia does better as a floating plant than a rooted plant. A friend has it rooted but they have high light and CO2 injection.

Crypts, as well as many other plants, have a tendency to die back and then will regrow as they adapt to the new setting. One thing that may help the rooted plants like crypts would be fertilizer tabs or capsules that go in the substrate.

From the looks of it the plants you have should all be fine with ludwigia as my only concern. If you want more plants add more of what is working now and you could also consider java fern, mosses and anubias as new additions.

I definitely agree with the water change frequency suggestion. With the light stocking of fish, the plants will take care of a good chunk of the bad stuff.

Keep in mind with a low light tank and low light plants you aren't going to seeing rapid growth. So when you say plants aren't thriving I'm not sure what you have in mind. In my low light tanks I want two things from my plants, that they stay alive and they are putting out new growth at least once or twice a month. If I get at least that I'm happy if I get more growth than that then just an added bonus.

Also next time you buy light bulbs, don't bother with the fish store bulbs. Go to Lowes or Home Depot and get a couple 6500K spiral CFLs. They work just as well if not better and should be cheaper.

[Markahsf]

I have two 10 gallons. A low light tank with two 13 watt CFLs and another with a 40 watts of light from a raised T5 light.

Both tanks are thriving without any special substrate or CO2. I don't usually mess with any liquid ferts since my tank is so small. Just plain old light. My low tech tank has java moss, java fern, amazon sword, anubias nana, anacharis, and some crypts. I've never had anything die in my low tech tank except for some hornwort (which is odd because it thrives in everyone elses tank). I don't see that you mentioned any of those plants.

Give them a shot. They are all low light plants and don't really require anything other than some light.

Good luck.