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Plants turning brown in new planted tank

sharkweek178

sharkweek178

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I've started a planted tank. I've had plants in this tank since approx the beginning of the month. The leaves of my bacopa monnieri started turning brown. I did some reading and read that the most likely culprit is nutrition deficiency so I added another root tab right underneath them. I'm using Seachem Flourish root tabs. The substrate is Quikrete play sand. Now my water wisteria (Hygrophila difformis) leaves are starting to turn brown too. The brown isn't wiping off the leaves so I don't think it's algae. It's a 29 gallon tank. I also dose 2 ml of Seachem Flourish Comprehensive Supplement twice a week. I'm trying to be cautious about how much I use because I don't want algae blooms. The lights are on for 9.5 hours a day. It's this model here.

I'm also wondering about the water parameters.
temperature - 74.3
water hardness - 136 PPM (mg/L) or 8 gpg
pH - 7.4
Ammonia is 0.25
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5.0

How is ammonia and nitrate getting in there? There is no livestock in the tank. Is this coming from dead plant matter? I think I included all relevant info but if not, let me know please.


View attachment 305333View attachment 305334View attachment 305335
 
Stan510 said:
Try the Seachem Iron,,that should stop the melting and brown.
Click to expand...
I'm reading that and wondering if that is why I've had so many problems with melting. Could you expound on your answer a little?

Thanks!
 
sharkweek178 said:
I've started a planted tank. I've had plants in this tank since approx the beginning of the month. The leaves of my bacopa monnieri started turning brown. I did some reading and read that the most likely culprit is nutrition deficiency so I added another root tab right underneath them. I'm using Seachem Flourish root tabs. The substrate is Quikrete play sand. Now my water wisteria (Hygrophila difformis) leaves are starting to turn brown too. The brown isn't wiping off the leaves so I don't think it's algae. It's a 29 gallon tank. I also dose 2 ml of Seachem Flourish Comprehensive Supplement twice a week. I'm trying to be cautious about how much I use because I don't want algae blooms. The lights are on for 9.5 hours a day. It's this model here.

I'm also wondering about the water parameters.
temperature - 74.3
water hardness - 136 PPM (mg/L) or 8 gpg
pH - 7.4
Ammonia is 0.25
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5.0

How is ammonia and nitrate getting in there? There is no livestock in the tank. Is this coming from dead plant matter? I think I included all relevant info but if not, let me know please.


View attachment 305333View attachment 305334View attachment 305335
Click to expand...

I do not see any issue with water parameters. And from the data on the light, it should be OK. And Seachem Flourish Comprehensive is fine. The root tabs will have minimal benefit for stem plants because they assimilate nutrients via the leaves and the roots (different nutrients for each). A photo of the plants might clue us in...the link to (I presume) photos didn't work for me.

I would not add iron. There is iron in the Flourish Comprehensive, and as much as plants need in a low-tech system. Iron is a micro-nutrient, and a heavy metal; conditioners detoxify heavy metals for good reason so you do not want to be over-dosing. Twice I killed my floating plants by using Flourish Iron along with Flourish Comprehensive.
 
Byron said:
I do not see any issue with water parameters. And from the data on the light, it should be OK. And Seachem Flourish Comprehensive is fine. The root tabs will have minimal benefit for stem plants because they assimilate nutrients via the leaves and the roots (different nutrients for each). A photo of the plants might clue us in...the link to (I presume) photos didn't work for me.

I would not add iron. There is iron in the Flourish Comprehensive, and as much as plants need in a low-tech system. Iron is a micro-nutrient, and a heavy metal; conditioners detoxify heavy metals for good reason so you do not want to be over-dosing. Twice I killed my floating plants by using Flourish Iron along with Flourish Comprehensive.
Click to expand...
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How long has the tank been running? (you stated is relatively new). You may just want to give them plants some time as they were recently transplanted; adding too much stuff can also cause other problems, besides being wasteful. Something to consider.... Good luck!
 
FranciscoB said:
How long has the tank been running? (you stated is relatively new). You may just want to give them plants some time as they were recently transplanted; adding too much stuff can also cause other problems, besides being wasteful. Something to consider.... Good luck!
Click to expand...
Just a couple of months. The plants have been in since about the beginning of the month.
I don't want to act rashly. But I don't want to wait too long to act either.
 
I was doing a water change and I think I was wrong. Some of the brown rubbed off so it's algae. That's going to be more work to fix but I can do it. The plan is to first, take the plants out and give them a dip in a bleach water solution.
Then I need to deal with the tank environment that's causing the algae. I'm going to cut back on added nutrients. And then I'm going to reduce lighting to 8 hours a day. I think that's the bare minimum for plants. If I'm wrong about that, someone tell me. Every week that I don't see algae, I'll add 15 minutes. Until I see algae again, then I go back to the prior schedule and leave it there. This is an ongoing process since I'm still adding plants. I have some floating plants arriving soon (which will affect how much light gets to the others and how much nutrients I need to add). and I have a few more to add before I consider the planting to be complete. So all I can really do is try to control it as best I can until have all the plants and then add the fish and then I can figure out how much light and nutrients I'll need on a permanent basis.
 
Diatoms are normal in new tanks, it takes a few months for a new aquarium to become biologically stable. And keep in mind that every "tweak" you do impacts this process, so jumping into doing this or dumping in that usually doesn't help unless it is correcting an actual problem.

I would use a comprehensive fertilizer minimally but nothing else (meaning, don't add nutrient "x" or something). Lighting may need adjusting, I don't know what type it is, what spectrum, or what duration now...these all matter. Along with the total plants (a photo of the entire tank would help with this). Having said that,tank lighting on more than around 8 hours is often excessive, so this is a possibility.

If you do adjustments, remember it takes a couple of weeks to see results. Rapid changes to this and that only throw the system off-balance more.
 
A bleach dip might kill off the plants. Just leave them as is- they might not be showing growth above,while growing fine roots below. Try the iron,do not make huge water changes. That whole thing with big water changes works if you have Co2 and high intensity lighting to compensate for the loss of nutrients and even then they use dosers to replace what they just drained out. Something i don't get but Tom Barr tells them to for high tech...but for the rest of us in lesser tech big water changes and often, just starve the plants to death.
If you insist on dipping-lol,use hydrogen peroxide...its safer.
 
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