Aquarium Plants

[Franki]

Can someone please enlighten me?

I have a 26 gallon bow front Aqueon tank.
It was set up last January.

The water is good all of the fish are the originals put in last year.
I seem to be losing ground on my plants.
I have a couple of swords that were doing well but seem to be fading.
I had a Peacock fern that was growing out of control and I kept pruning it back.
So basically the plants were doing well.

Oh and I have the Laterite clay under the gravel.
I mistakenly treated my tank (heavily) for what I thought was ich.
It seemed to get better and come back.
I finally dosed with Triple Sulfa and everything cleared.
This was all about 3 months ago.
I have changed out the water many times so any residual should be minimal or gone (I think).
Water all in good range on test strips.
Could the treatments have hurt my plants?
My Peacocks I removed and recently put in new.
My Swords started to die so I cut them way back
The plants just don't seem to be thriving like they did.

I went today and bought a different light.
I had the original light Aqueon 15W T8 18" 8,000K

I bought Aqua-Glo 15W T8 18" 18,000K it also has 290 Lumen 7500h on the package.

I honestly don't have a clue what all that means but I've been searching the net for an hour and I'm still confused.

Can someone please tell me if I got a better light for my plants than I had and is it a good strength for growing plants??

Thank you for any help,
Franki

 

[Biulu]

I suggest you change your newly bought lamp for a light in the 4000 - 10,000 K range. The light from these lamps are best for plants. As a comparison: daylight is about 6500 K. If you go to higher Kelvin, your light becomes bluer and if you go down, your light becomes more yellow. It depends on your personal taste, which one your choose.

Are you dosing any fertilizers? I don't know how much laterite you have and how long it exactly has been in there, but it is possible that the clay is exhausted and does not contain sufficient nutrients anymore for your plants. You can compensate the depletion by dosing liquid fertilizer or putting roottabs for your swords.

Is your fern attached to some kind of rock or other hardscape? In that case I would dose liquid fertilizers.

 

[Franki]

Thanks for the reply Biulu,
So basically you're saying I should put my Aqueon bulb back in..
It wasn't burnt out, I just wanted to get my plants to grow.

The laterite has been in a year this coming January and was probably1/4 - 1/2 inch.

My fern isn't attached to anything but I did buy a plant about 2 weeks ago that is growing
in a piece of drftwood.
I was wondering if the wood was ok in the tank.

I've never even thought to pour fertilizer in my tank. That is something I will have to check out,
I'm kind of scared to do that. It won't hurt the fish or the filter?

Thank you for the information, I appreciate it.

Franki

 

[Biulu]

So your fern is in the substrate? I suggest you tie it onto a piece of wood or a piece of stone/rock. For the swords I recommend root tabs.

No, the fertilizer is not dangerous for either the filter or the fish. We are talking about ml here, nothing more. I dose fertilizer 2x a week. I suggest you buy a TPN+ fertilizer. Or they sometimes alos call it macro minerals.