[freak]

Ok so the water sprite, water wisteria, java fern and hygrophillia polysperma are all doing great in my tank. But my amazon sword the leaves start to turn brown and the leaf ends up dying. I have root tabs in the gravel for them and I'm dosing comprensive once a week along with excel every other day. The excel helped out a lot. I run my lights 2 hours in the morning and 5 hours in the evening. I've messed around with different amount of light cycles to no avail. Any help would be greatly appreciated. This is a low light 55g tank. Also I have new growth on this sword and that piece is just about grown out of the water now.

 

[waterspider]

How long have you had them? Swords are often grown emersed for suppliers, and those leaves die off when they are submersed. If you have new leaf growth, they should stabalise eventually. You could check the roots of one to see if there's new growth there.

Can't help otherwise - only learning this stuff myself.

 

[Zapins]

Photos are needed to help you.

 

[caique]

Did you try Iron root tabs they are big time Iron hogs.

I use Total and Iron tabs from aquariumplants.com and my swords go crazy, I also use Turface which I think they like.

Also when the leaves die just pull them off at the bottom like you would a leaf of lettuce instead of cutting them.

 

[freak]

Iron root tabs. Hmm that may be what I need.

 

[Zapins]

A lack of iron shows up as white or pale green new leaves only. Old leaves are unaffected and do not turn brown and die since iron is not a mobile element and plants cannot salvage it from old tissue when environmental concentrations are too low. See this article for more info and photos of sword plant iron deficiency: http://deficiencyfinder.com/?page_id=73

You really need to post a quality close up photo (preferably several of each of your plants) to get accurate answers to your problem.

 

[freak]

Here's a pic.

 

[Zapins]

Notice how the only leaves that are dying are the round ones, not the long thinner type. The round leaves are emersed leaves which were grown and adapted to above-water conditions. The long thin ones are submersed leaves which are adapted to underwater conditions.

Frequently sword plants lose the emersed grown leaves when planted underwater. It is a fairly normal part of keeping sword plants. Read more about it here: http://deficiencyfinder.com/?page_id=716

The emersed grown leaves will die off, so you can preemptively go ahead and cut them off or wait until they die and then remove them. Once the new leaves convert to submersed growth you should no longer have any old leaf die off. If you start to see submersed leaves dying then you might have a nutrient deficiency, but we can cross that bridge if we come to it.

 

[freak]

Thanks!