Brown bottom leafs, plants don't seem to be growing?

[Darkening vii]

Hi there,

My tank is a 100cm x 40cm x 40cm approx 42 US gallon tank, running 2 x 30 watt T8's rated at 4500k and 18500k both tubes are less than a month old.

I'm also running a co2 system (pressurised) co2 is coming out a nano defuser but is being mixed with the pump outlet (fluval302) this has been running for about a week. I am using tropica plant grow premium, and api root tabs. I only have gravel no peat ect.

My problem is that I just can't seem to get any growth on my plants the bottom leaves see to just die/go brown, I'm at a loss as to what else I can do!

 

[stu_]

Hi
for starters if you're using pressurised then ideally you want a fert with NPK, so you may want to change from Tropica Premium to Tropica Specialised.
Do you use a drop checker? How many bubbles per sec into the diffuser?
Also what plants, and how long have they been in.
Lastly, i don't know much about Fluval kit, whats the LPH rating on a Fluval 302, you may not have enough flow

 

[Darkening vii]

hi there got some pics now (sorry about the quality though there from my ipad),

to answer your questions I will get the tropica changed as you recommended,
I am putting about 1 -1.5 per second in the bubble counter. I have just upped the co2 time from about 6hrs per day to about 8 (goes on 1 hour before light and goes off 1 hour before light goes off) I have also increased the light time to about 10 hours per day.

the fluval is 306 not the 302 (my bad lol) but it's output of 1150 lph should I add ferts on daily basis?

 

[Mick.Dk]

Plants look like some kind of Echinodorus (sword-plants). If they are, and you planted them recently, it's their natural behavior to dismiss the original leaves (that were produced above water in the nursery) and grow new ones, adapted to life under water. Those wil often be quite different from the ones grown above water in shape and/or colour. They're typical "root-feeders", so they will benefit a lot from your root tabs 🙂.
As for ferts in general Stu has covered it nicely 😛
Mick.

 

[Darkening vii]

hi and thanks for the reply, the tank has been planted for about 3 weeks (ish) after a few issues of the plec taking a quick liking to the tank I seemed to have sorted most problems. I have ordered some new fert but I will carry on using the premium till then. I will start dosing daily for a while to help it along. will keep you updated!

 

[Mick.Dk]

You could actually do a mix, of the two ferts........ to keep the amount of N and P a little lower for this "running the tank in" period, since the premium doesn't contain N and P and the specialised does !
And just in case you doesn't know, the Plecostomus sometimes take a fancy in rasping Echinodorus-leaves ! some have that problem, while others don't.........sometimes a food more specific for plec's will get them off the habit.
Mick.

 

[Darkening vii]

Hi all just a quick update, I removed my plants and trimmed off any dead or dying leaves, trimmed all brown roots off, and removed any signs of the horrid cotton wool like stuff from the roots.

I replanted my tank in a random sort of fashion, but when I did remove my plants most of them did have new roots growing.

Watch this space!

 

[Mick.Dk]

Sounds promising - and sounds like, what sword-plants would do 🙂
From this point things will improve................
Mick.