My plants are not doing well...

to me, looks like some type of nutrient deficency....are you fertlizing on a regular basis? do you have diy or pressurized co2? what lights are you running?

Not enough information...

Give us some history, how long have they been in there and doing badly. What sort of light, tank size, substrate, etc.

Cant tell if its algae or the leaves turning brown.

What kind of lights are on the tank? photo period?
fert dosing details?
Water parameters?
filtration?
any dead or stagnant spots in the tank?


I have nana petites which have largely been in the dark in my overgrown floater tank for the past 2 months. only uncovered them this past weekend to find they nearly doubled in size with little light if any... they are rooted in flourite but hardly get any light for that matter. Anubias and java ferns should really be easy to keep unless something is dearly wrong.

I'm running 1 T8 on a 30" fixture over a 29gal anywhere from 8-12 hours a day. I dose 2ml of Excel every other day and 3ml of Flourish twice a week. My substrate is a 1-2mm small gravel, but the anubias is attached to driftwood and the ferns are matted. I have crypts and petite anubias that are planted doing OK. Water is typically 0/0/20. The anubias in the pic have been there a couple of months and the ferns about a month.

6500k bulb or another?

Is that like a 15W T8 bulb? If so, it is not enough light for the plants to grow. They won't die quickly, but over time, oldest leaves will start to accumulate algae, and then it looks like they are not doing well.

You can see that the new leaves of your anubias and cryps look fine, it is just that they grow so slowly that the oldest leaves will decay faster than the new ones grow.

It's a 20w Life Glo. I tried to pick plants that would be fine under lower lighting. I was trying to avoid co2...

You don't NEED CO2, but there needs to be a certain minimum light level for plants to photosynthesize/grow. Your light might be at or below that threshold. Keep in mind that commonly sold aquarium lights are meant to show your fish, not allow plants to grow.

Your light is weak, I use to have the same light on my 37 (similar dimensions to yours). My plants were slowly dying from the bottom up. Upgraded to T5NO and they bounced back. I also started to dose dry ferts and it helped greatly.

re:

tiggity said:

your light is weak, i use to have the same light on my 37 (similar dimensions to yours). My plants were slowly dying from the bottom up. Upgraded to t5no and they bounced back. I also started to dose dry ferts and it helped greatly.

Click to expand...

+1.

Thanks!