Vals love me, nothing else will grow :(

I suspect it is the decaying plants that have added to the nitrate load. I try to trim out the worst looking leaves whenever possible (hence the reason I pulled out all the hairgrass, it all looked bad). I've tested my test kit against a 10 and a 40 ppm standard and it was fairly close. The colors were not exact but the 10 was certainly on the oranger side and the 40 was more red...within the tolerances of test kit in my opinion. That was the first thing I thought when I began seeing nitrates that high. I always follow the directions for that test to the second and shake the 2nd bottle like a crazy man to ensure it is well mixed.

The tank was dry-started on 2/21 and filled on 3/28 so yes, it is definitely a new tank. I cycled the the filter through a bucket feeding either ammonia or a decaying grocery store shrimp and I waited out that cycle until I saw the spike in nitrites and finally the appearance of nitrates. It took about a month to work through the entire cycle but I'm fairly certain it is all cycled and good to go. The bioload on the filter is minimal now though with just 10 shrimp and 2 otos in the tank.

I didn't see any mold at all when I re-used the aquasoil, at least nothing obvious. I got a little fungus like strand of material on the HC when I first filled the tank but since then nothing, just a little algae.

I'll just keep my fingers crossed that the tank is still new and working out some bugs. I had hoped the blyxa would begin to show some growth after 3 weeks. At least it hasn't all melted away...maybe it's still busy putting down some crazy roots!

This is the only picture I have available right now, I can take another when I get home this evening. Sorry it is not the clearest picture.

I'm a planner. But I must say I did not plan for all of these struggles keeping my plants alive. To make them flourish, yes, I expected lots of trial and error but I at least expected I could keep them alive. Ahh, but isn't this why we do this hobby? To keep us on our toes?

So today I came home and pretty much every one of those nice pretty green plantings of DHG you see above are now brown. I pulled a couple out and they had started to grow roots, no plantlets seen but the top definitely looks dead. Should I remove them all or give them a big haircut and see if they send out new shoots?
These were from those gel packs from Petsmart but I've heard of others successfully growing them. I was very meticulous in removing all the gel before planting and rinsed them in only tank water when I was cleaning them of the gel.

HC isn't showing much in the form of growth. But some BBA seems to be taking hold of the HC.

Retested water parameters again. Same results as the last message. pH might have been a touch higher at 6.8 but the CO2 has only been on for 3 hours.

The CO2 seems to be constant at 4 bps. I was lucky I got home yesterday before the CO2 solenoid opened, when I heard it click on I noticed less than 1 bps after 30 minutes. I think I lowered the pressure too much earlier in the week and it needed to be bumped up to 20psi. It's been at a constant 4 bps since then.

I'm shocked the blyxa isn't completely melted away. It seems to be holding it's own right, no new growth, but not a lot of dead leaves either. I'll sort through it more this weekend when I do a water change and see if I can't clear out some of the worst leaves.

Could there be something toxic in my substrate causing this?

NH3 is zero and has been for every test I've done. I usually test 2-3 times per week while I've been searching for clues to this mystery.

Water temp is set to 78 and I tested with a portable thermometer just now and it was 78.8 so heater is working fine.

A month ago (33 days to be exact) I pulled the vals and critters out and did the "one-two punch" H2O2 and Excel treatment. I followed the "recipe" exactly. I had a BGA outbreak and didn't want to treat the new tank with antibiotics for fear of destroying a rather young and immature beneficial bacteria colony. Vals are reported as finicky with Excel and since they were not showing any algae besides the typical hair type algae that shows up on the older leaves I pulled them out. The BGA quickly died. The hairgrass didn't seem to affected by this and a couple of the plants continued to put out some runners for a couple more weeks even while the older patches were dying off. I thought this plant was going to make it. But slowly it started going brown. The HC never really took to submerged growth and may have been a bit affected by the peroxide or excel...I don't know for sure since submersion and treatment occurred within 2 weeks of each other.

I was close to pointing fingers at the peroxide or Excel for slowing the growth of the HC and old DHG so I did the experiment of planting new DHG and one new pot of HC to see if maybe it was the stress of the submersion or something I've done in the past month that caused them to stop growing. Unfortunately you see the outcome of the DHG experiment. The newer pot of HC is probably too new to the tank to determine anything in terms of growth.

I have occasionally spot treated some small portions of the HC, usually right next to the glass with peroxide. Shut off filter, wait for current to stop, dose a couple of drops of 2 ml peroxide diluted in 3 ml of water in a syringe directly on the affected area (essentially using 1.2% peroxide at this point). I let it sit for 10 minutes then crank on the filter again.

Interestingly, there are two little plantings of the new DHG that look amazing and still a bright green. Will be interesting to tell if they die off too.

Not sure if this helps anything but I have algae forming at or just under the substrate level. Lots of bubbles and a greenish slime on the glass wall. This has been fairly common in this tank and usually once a week I clean the glass in this portion and with a razor blade push the algae/bubbles down further into the substrate. Also note the brush type algae starting to grow on the rock and the black substrate support. This side of the tank is the closest (though still 20 or so feet) from the window so it does get a bit of sunlight in the morning hours (as much sun as the pacific northwest offers).



This algae is why I've kept the photoperiod low. I thought it would keep it at bay. Plenty of CO2 and nutrients and limiting light was the goal. I was at 9 hours and algae (although it was mostly BGA) grew like mad. I could certainly try going up in photoperiod. I've heard of people being successful at 6 hours hence why I picked it. I'll bump up to 7 hours tomorrow.

Unfortunately I don't have any other tanks set up. I probably have a move or two more in the next couple of years so I'm sticking to just one tank for now.

Looks like I'll be needing some more hairgrass this weekend. And I might pull up more of the dying HC too.

Got home today and found more of the hairgrass browning and on its way to death. I decided to pull it all out. If the s. repens stays happy I'm hoping to keep that "carpet" moving to the middle ground of my tank.

Blyxa is showing signs of new growth and I can see some massive roots from the side of the tank. I'm now reading that these plants can sometimes take a few weeks to get used to their new tank, depending on how different it was from their previous owner's tank parameters. Reading more on blyxa I might be trimming it incorrectly just cutting off the worst looking leaves. Sounds as if I'm better off uprooting it and replanting any of the newer offshoots. Right now any of the leaves that are dying are getting pretty well covered in algae and when I can get to them I just hack them off. Between my hacking and the previous melting I think the plants are less crowded = more light = happier plants.

I'll bump the lights up to 8 hours tonight. I keep forgetting to check the tank pH before bedtime, in the morning it was 7.6+ (quite blue). I was cleaning the drop checker today and got a little careless, tapping it against the side of sink...broke it. Oops.