What's wrong?

Hi what's wrong with plant and is there any way of recovery?

kevfiz said:

Hi what's wrong with plant and is there any way of recovery? View attachment 93966

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What species is the plant? It looks like an Amazon Sword to me, but I could be wrong. I recommend just monitoring it, and make sure to a couple of water changes. But once the leaf is dead, it’s dead.

Cut the dying leaves off at the base. If it has new growth coming in I’d just monitor it for now. Could be a mineral deficiency or if you haven’t had it long some melting. The white color could also be something growing on the leaves. Hard to tell if it’s just the light hitting the leaves or something white growing on it from the pictures.

Cut off the dead leaves. They won't recover so there is no point in allowing them to continue drawing nutrients. There is an imbalance in nutrients and light. The rest of the plant will be fine if you can fix the imbalance, but if not will eventually go the same way.

If its not enough light you could try increasing the photo period by an hour. This is not guaranteed to work if the light is simply too dim. Try some root tabs. If you have used these before they do become exhausted and need replacing.

I agree. Just cut off the bad leaves so they don’t rot and affect the rest of the plant.

There are two issues here, maybe. One has been mentioned about older leaves...if this plant [which is an Echinodorus griesbachii, probably sold under the now synonymous name E. bleherae] was recently acquired or moved, the older (outer) leaves sometimes yellow and die off. Provided you see new growth which on this plant will be from the centre of the crown, that may be all that's at issue.

However, it may also be a nutrient deficiency as seangee suggests and with which I tend to agree here, though we cannot see the entire plant or the tank generally. This is related to the lighting, also agree. So we need more data on the light, and nutrient additives if any. If additives are deemed the issue, it must be a comprehensive supplement; too many deficiencies/excesses of nutrients have near-identical symptoms to suggest one nutrient over another, at least until we have the whole picture. And dosing too much of one nutrient can cause the plant to shut down assimilation of another nutrient.

seangee said:

Cut off the dead leaves. They won't recover so there is no point in allowing them to continue drawing nutrients.

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Echinodorus plants do not behave like this, though it would seem a sensible assumption. Plants in this genus put their energy into new growth (arising from the crown at the centre), so the older outer leaves will be allowed to suffer the consequences. Additionally, the plant will take nutrients from those older leaves to furnish the new growth, to some extent anyway. When ever I decide to pull off the older yellowing leaves, I always ask myself if I should, or leave them to provide nutrients to the newer leaves. I usually take the old leaves out, but I do give it a moment's thought.

Byron said:

Echinodorus plants do not behave like this, though it would seem a sensible assumption. Plants in this genus put their energy into new growth (arising from the crown at the centre), so the older outer leaves will be allowed to suffer the consequences. Additionally, the plant will take nutrients from those older leaves to furnish the new growth, to some extent anyway. When ever I decide to pull off the older yellowing leaves, I always ask myself if I should, or leave them to provide nutrients to the newer leaves. I usually take the old leaves out, but I do give it a moment's thought.

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Whoops - sorry. I do remove these on mine and assumed there was a benefit (other than cosmetic).

seangee said:

Whoops - sorry. I do remove these on mine and assumed there was a benefit (other than cosmetic).

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It is that way up to a point, which I probably should have mentioned previously. If the base of the leaf stem is still firm, then nutrients can still pass and the plant can use them for new growth as i mentioned. But if the base is also yellowed, obviously nutrients are not passing either way, and removing the leaf is what I would do to tidy it up and avoid organics accumulating as Deanasue referred to in post #5. With these large swords (once they are rooted anyway) I find that a mild tug can dislodge such leaves, but not those still attached.