too much light?

[DN530]

on my 29g i use a 55 watt power compact light made by all-glass. my sword plants have light green leaves and some are turning brown. the big sword isn't as full as it should be. i thought it also could be the water temperature, but it holds steady between 77-80 F. is it because there is too much light? i planted a dwarf lily 4 months ago to help subdue the lighting, but nothing has changed.

 

[tsr770]

That shouldnt be too much light, I have a 46 gallon tank with 126 watts of light on it, 96 CF and 30 NO. My big sword plant is doing great and growing by the day, you could have a iron deffiency which could cause your plants to not get the real dark green. With the light you have your still actually a little low, just under the 2 watts per gallon rule that most go by to say you have medium lighting.

My sword also really took off when I started using CO2 in the tank, along with the rest of my plants. If you want to block out some light, get some pennywort, the stuff goes crazy floating on top of my aquarium, so much as that lately I am supplying my LFS with it every week.

Try some root tabs for the sword, maybe your substrate is just not rich enough for it.

 

[Silly me]

thats 1.8watts per gallon, you might want to dubble that?

I have a 36gallon with 119watts and I am bussy upgrading mine to 140watts??
as I have trubble growing swords aswell,

also yellow leaves might be due to a lack of Fe, Mg or Ca

 

[Lateral Line]

You certainly do not have too much light. You could do with a little more in fact. Something to check however, is the quality of your light. Most domestic CF's for use around the house have a very low spectral temperature, typically 2700K. This is too low for planted tanks which really need fuller spectrum lamps, (5500K - 6500K), you can get these, but you need to be sure that is what you have. Simply putting the Wattage over the tank will not help if the lamps are producing light the plants can't use.