2Nd Planted Attempt

[baker360360]

Hey guys. having another go at planting my tank, first time most of it rotted away so gonna try it different this time.

Starting with what I've got then the questions and finally some pics that might be useful

So it's a 50gal jewel trogon 190 2 x jewel high lite day t5s 28w (run no longer than 5months), bio flow 3.0 internal fil, external fil 1000l/h both running longer than 1yr, substrate sand with crushed coral on top. Rocks and 2x 2yr old small piece of bog wood.

Tang cichlids x15 ( 2-3 of them some times uproot the grass Lol)

Good feeding habits , most food gets eaten. On top of good water changes and no problems with water chemistry.
I've had a limited amount of plants (survived from the last planted attemp) for a long time, anubias Nana that I've grown into 4 plants( attached to wood/Rock) and some grass that sprouts new blades along under the substrate (by the time new clumps grow the fish dig up old bits so Im always at square one).

I got what was labeled as 50 plants delivered today and so far am happy, they consisted of what I think some stems / crowns / roots types. I managed to plant them all in the substrate using some lead weights for the steams ( not expecting them to live for some reason), I planted them as singles and groups with space to grow.

I think some of them are cabomba, Amazon sword, elodea, wisteria.

I've been dosing daily with easy Life easy carbo per instruction for 4days now and 1perweek fert for the last 2 weeks, I'm going to change fert to tnc complete as of next week. Also was thinking of adding substrate fert tabs.

I'm after some tips here what would you do different?
I have two filter outlets where should I aim them? Directly at plants or surface.
Should I run lights longer than 8 hours?
My nano anubias have always been in a real bad state, they grow new leaves often but brown quick and are always covered in algae.
What about water temp? It's always around 27c, heater set to 24 so I think thAt 27 is my room temp.
I have 3-4 nerite snails and a lot of mts.

I will upload some pics asap
Here's some of the new plant and one of the nana anubias
More new plants
Sorry no idea why pics are sideways lol.

 

[goldfinger]

Easy Life easy carbo never use premix stuff find it costly and not tailored to what some plants need?
If you have browing of leaves it could be deficiency of some kind?
I find dry ferts help as you can mix the right kind.
For example you might have lack of iron so root tabs will have Fe (micro) even possible Nitrogen deficiency (Macro (NPK)
Or it could be the lack of co2 so photo periods of light really can't exchange the sugars or neutrients needed to grow sustain the plants?
PH or hardness of the water can effect uptake of nutrients also.

 

[Byron]

My first suggestion would be that your lighting is intense and the nutrients are not in balance.  Rapid growing algae on Anubias is almost always a sign of intense lighting.  Aside from the plants, are you seeing algae elsewhere?  Reducing the duration may help, though this has limited benefits due to the intensity.  Floating plants can help reduce the light further.  Some fixtures will operate with only one tube instead of two, check this out.
 
Many of the rift lake cichlid species enjoy plants as part of their diet, so the soft leaf species are not likely to fare particularly well.  And digging up substrate-rooted delicate plants is likely to occur.  Plants are not a natural feature of these lakes, aside from Vallisneria which thrives near the sandy shores of one or more of the lakes.
 
Byron.

 

[baker360360]

Very little spots of green on glass. Very hard to see and hard to clean. No chance of a pic the camera can't focas on it lol.
Gold finger, my hardness is around medium high. Last I checked
I also got rid of most of my cichlids today and am going to start fresh. I've got aload of fert substrate and new gravel coming tomorrow some wood soaking now. This won't be ideal for the fish so took them to my lfs. Gonna make a planted journal on here from scratch so please check that out and drop some hints if possible.