Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => Fish Tank Plant Advice => Topic started by: justin0com on October 22, 2017, 09:56:12 PM
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Hi all, need some help as not sure as to why my plants have not been able the thrive with so much light.
I have two light setups running.
T5 high light colour and a nature 54w
T8 power glo and aqua glo 40w
I add 10ml of plant food every other day and have co2 pressurised going in for 6 hours which allows for enough the whole day.
Just unsure if I got the correct amount of light going in or the correct bulb mixture.
I am due to change the T8 40w bulbs as they are around 16 months old. Just thought about getting 2 x aqua glo bulbs but thought I would ask for some advise.
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What type of plants do you have?
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I wouldn’t be able to answer this as I didn’t they the names
I just bought a few here and a few there I only have 6-7 types left. Two are like grass type. Did have over 300 stem plants in there before I added othe lighting unit
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@justin0com If you take some pictures, a long shot of the tank and some of individual plants you will probably get them identified and an answer to the original question as well
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Plant growth is normally limited by one of the the things they need to grow, an excess of something such as light will normally not result in extra growth because something else is holding the plants back. This also normally results in some kind of algae growth. Can you also describe any algae you are getting and provide a photo of that too?
Let us know which fertiliser your using too please.
I'll try my best to see what I can advise from that :cheers:
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Here are the plants I have.
GREEN SPADE LEAF,
AMAZON SWORDS,
BORNEO SWORDS,
MALAYAN SWORDS,
HILL RADICAN SWORDS,
BORNEO FERN,
UMBRELLA FERN,
JAVA FERN,
INDIAN FERN,
ELODEA DENSA
There are a few more species in there but can not find there names.
I forgot to mention I root tabbed it and the substrate is 2-3mm gravel. Some plants I can not name are doing well. I have had an issue with bba and got true SAE fish which took care Of that a year ago. The t8 bulbs are on for 8 hours and the t5ho lights are on for 4 hours on/off over 6 Different times on the same 8 hours to simulate shade and direct sunlight as the t5ho bulbs are bright and they make the green stand right out.
Hope this helps.
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This may help you http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/lighting.htm
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What are your water parameters? Hardness, pH, nitrates? And in what way are your plants not thriving? Are they all suffering the same symptoms, or a variety? What size is your tank and how well stocked is it with fish?
As @Matt said, photos would be great.
I'm not sure about your other sword plants, but Amazons need a lot of nitrates (or nitrogen in other forms). I have a heavily planted tank, but struggle to keep Amazon swords healthy because I have tap water with very low nitrates.
Java fern, however has a low demand for nitrogen, and is slow growing. So I would expect those two plants to have different issues.
The website coynie09 linked is really helpful. Not only can it help identify why you might have algae (for example I currently have pretty much every one that has "low nutrients" as a cause), it can also help identify why your plants are failing.
Have you heard about lighting regimes that include a siesta? You mentioned that your lights are on a pattern that effects the lighting levels, but you don't mention if they have a period during the day when they are off. I am a strong proponent of having a lighting siesta. I have found that for my tank 4-5 hours with the lights off in the middle of the day works really well.