[aquarist]

Hi Anthony,

Sorry, I thought I made myself clear. Flourish and Excel are applied at each PWC which is made twice a week at 25-gallons. About every six or eight weeks Plant Tabs are added. As for lighting, I am using a Quad T-5 setup, utilizing two 48” tubes at 10 K each and two 48” tubes and 6400k.

bill in pa

Sorry to sort of ask the same question but we need to know how MUCH of those chemicals you are adding. Also you should dose excel everyday, it is a form of carbon that is used by your plants to help them grow, think of it as an alternative to carbon dioxide. With the flourish I believe it recommends that you dose that at least 3 times a week as well, so you should probably need to increase your dosing of that. You may want to add some iron as well, I believe you can get one from Seachem since I see a theme there with your products. When you say "root tab" is that the brand name of the product you are using? It's hard to judge what nutrients are getting into your fertilizer by just "root tab", different root tablet fertilizers are made up of different things, a lot of people on this forum prefer to use Oscmocote Plus root tabs this is a 15-9-12 fertilizer, they are very affordable and offer great results, you can usually get 100 of them for about $10 USD.

As for the lights are you using T5 or T5HO? There is a major difference. If they are regular T5s you need more light, it the are T5HOs you should be okay growing amazon swords, they don't require too much like and you should have around medium to medium-low light with a T5HO lamp. Also you should include your light cycle, how many hour on and off.

You should also attempt to provide some water parameters when asking questions like this, you should try to include ph GH/Kh nitrates and nitrites at least. A lot of information can be ascertained from these parameters.

It is best to try and post this kind of information in your first post so when people read it they do not have to ask the OP additional questions regarding water parameters, lighting, and fertilizers use, this will not only help you get a faster response but more informative information as well, because people will not be guessing the issue they will have the facts and can make an informed decision. Also they say a picture speak a thousand words, so it is usually a good idea to add a picture or two, the better the quality the easier it will be for others to help you.