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What's wrong with my plants, please?

Carbon deficiency, without doubt. Either reduce your light, or consider liquid carbon or pressurised CO2. The third option would be to put a soil layer under your current substrate, but this is obviously totally disruptive.
 
Hi
the top one is Hygrophila, a narrow leaved type.
The bottom one looks like a Bacopa with emmersed leaves melting.How long's it been in the tank ?
 
Carbon deficiency, without doubt. Either reduce your light, or consider liquid carbon or pressurised CO2. The third option would be to put a soil layer under your current substrate, but this is obviously totally disruptive.

Funnily enough, I have some liquid CO2 in the post and have just bought some injection gear off here.
There is aquasoil under the acadama.
 
There is aquasoil under the acadama

I hope you sort out the issue with some carbon. I used to have an issue with one tank in which I put JBL aquabasis plus. From well growing hydrophila in river gravel previously without any ferts or CO2, it turned into a melting disaster never to grow a plant in 6 months for whatever reason. Needless to say I even dosed liquid carbon and ferts for the first time in that tank to try and reverse the problem without any success. The plants looked exactly like yours. I took the tank apart and binned the soil. Now it has plain play sand and the same hydrophila is growing fine. Go figure.
 
The above comment is potentially misleading as to the cause of oldbloke's problem. I can only assume that there was some other coincidental factor in your story that prevented your plants' growth, sciencefiction.
Many people, including myself us AquaSoil without any problems. I am using it with moler clay as a cap, so my substrate is very similar to oldbloke's. I am using pressurised CO2 and dosing EI fertiliser, and have yet to see any problems. I can guarantee with a comprehensive fertiliser regimen and some form of carbon supplementation, the plants will flourish.
 
First of all I want to apologize to oldbloke for the long response below.

The above comment is potentially misleading as to the cause of oldbloke's problem. I can only assume that there was some other coincidental factor in your story that prevented your plants' growth, sciencefiction.
Many people, including myself us AquaSoil without any problems. I am using it with moler clay as a cap, so my substrate is very similar to oldbloke's. I am using pressurised CO2 and dosing EI fertiliser, and have yet to see any problems. I can guarantee with a comprehensive fertiliser regimen and some form of carbon supplementation, the plants will flourish.

It may sound misleading to some. The only reason I mentioned it is because I would not recommend that JBL aquasoil to my worst enemy and in my experience substrate plays a major role in plant health, no matter how much some deny it. Otherwise no one would be using ADA amazonia and such, and would just column dose instead.

Mine is anecdotal experience too, but the fact remains that liquid carbon and comprehensive fertilizer did not solve my problem. For those that think flow was an issue, the tank was always having two filters giving about 17x the tank volume an hour per manufacturer's specs. I am totally aware of what plants need to grow and I am not a beginner having 4 fully planted and 1 semi planted tank. I didn't intend to lead oldbloke in the wrong direction either.
I didn't try injected CO2 with that tank,but with liquid carbon and micro and macro ferts daily the tank could not grow even one plant in 6 months. The only plants that didn't completely die were the anubias and 3 amazon swords which I moved since to a mineralized topsoil tank and they recovered beyond recognition in the space of a few weeks. The only difference between the tanks is the soil substrate. One can go out of there way to get a tank to work but sometimes you just have to start it the right way too.

Some pictures for you:
The biggest of the 3 surviving amazon swords in the problem tank. This sword is 5-6 months old, or at least has been in that tank for that amount of time since I pulled it from a mother sword in another tank.
dscf4328a.jpg


The same amazon swords after they were moved to a tank with just different soil substrate but totally low tech. The picture below is 2 weeks after they were moved taken on the 16th June. I have the dates because I started a journal for rescaping the tank they were originally in and have a journal of this tank too. I moved them on the day I took the above tank apart.

h57h.jpg

And how the hydrophila used to look in the problem tank. It actually took 2-3 days max for it to melt rapidly no matter what I did. It was like I was putting it in acid:

dscf3575x.jpg

And exactly the same tank below 2 months after rescape with floating hydrophila of the same species happily growing not even planted:

v0h9.jpg

As you can see the difference is obvious. There were some chemical processes going on that were killing my plants fast when I used the JBL aquasoil. Maybe it was in combination with my tap water, don't know and never figured it out but it remains a fact.
 
No apologies needed, thanks for the reply.
There is no doubt that successfully growing plants in an aquarium can be quite a challenge! There are no easy roads to victory even with the advice available on here.......and I don't think there will be a better place to learn! I think you just have to give it a go and see. I went down the akadama on aquasoil route. I think it's working to some extent but not totally, even with the "easy" plants I have. Therefore I have decided to up the ante a bit and I have started dosing Easycarb today. As I said, I will soon have CO2 injection gear which I will get set up in time.

Once again, many thanks to all who contribute on here.
 
Hi all,
I'd have a look at your nitrogen and potassium dosing, despite what others may tell you, it is perfectly possible to have healthy green plants with ambient levels of CO2. Leaves can be pale green for a number of reasons, but common ones are lack of nitrogen or potassium, followed by a lack of magnesium, or a very high calcium/magnesium ratio. Usually with magnesium, or iron, deficiency you get interveinal chlorosis, rather than a general paling, and plants need these in much lower amounts of the other essential micro-nutrients than they do for the macro nutrients N & K.

If you have floating plants and they are pale green, it is a very good indicator that you either have too much, or too little light, or you have a deficiency in at least one nutrient. The reason for this is they have access to aerial CO2 at ~400ppm.

Have a look at this one for a bit more explanation: <Duckweed(amazon frogbit) dead. Nutritient deficiency? Which one? | UK Aquatic Plant Society>.

cheers Darrel
 
Hi all,
I'd have a look at your nitrogen and potassium dosing, despite what others may tell you, it is perfectly possible to have healthy green plants with ambient levels of CO2. Leaves can be pale green for a number of reasons, but common ones are lack of nitrogen or potassium, followed by a lack of magnesium, or a very high calcium/magnesium ratio. Usually with magnesium, or iron, deficiency you get interveinal chlorosis, rather than a general paling, and plants need these in much lower amounts of the other essential micro-nutrients than they do for the macro nutrients N & K.

If you have floating plants and they are pale green, it is a very good indicator that you either have too much, or too little light, or you have a deficiency in at least one nutrient. The reason for this is they have access to aerial CO2 at ~400ppm.

Have a look at this one for a bit more explanation: <Duckweed(amazon frogbit) dead. Nutritient deficiency? Which one? | UK Aquatic Plant Society>.

cheers Darrel

Thanks Darrel.
As I may have said before, I got the starter kit for EI dosing from the sponsors on here. I'm doing about 50% so maybe it's time to up it a bit?
My lighting is 2x14w T5s which are on for 6 hours a day over a 30x18x12 109l tank.

Cheers.
 
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