Are those Molly's? Platys? Mine always devour my cabombas, your anacharis might survive though. You should add root tabs or a substrate for plants. Which lighting are you using? CO2 really helped my plants. Don't add fertilisers just yet or you might have an algae bloom.
Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice
You might also want a bit more substrate for the sword to root into. It looks as though you don't have very much in there. They grow quite substantial roots if they're healthy.
They are molly fry. Yeah but the thing is ive had these plants in the tank for quite a while and im not getting anywhere they just dont seem to be growing :/
Is there no way i can get the plants to grow without root tabs? if i do decided to use fertilisers should i use liquid or root tabs?
The light im using is aqua lux 13walt 7200k
No i dont use any co2
Yeah might add some more sand i was only going to run this tank for a bit until my fry grew a bit but planning on keeping it now so might transfer some more sand from my other tank
Algae usually grows happily if you give it enough light. Try running the lights for more hours per day.. 12 hours usually provides an abundance of algae. Might want to add just one or two hours daily at a time to see how much you get.
The issue with the plants is that you have very little substrate for them to root in, and very little food for them to consume. Plants need both food and light. You have pretty strong lights, so they need more food to grow. Light drives plant growth, so if you have a lot of light and not a lot of food the plants do poorly.
Liquid fertilizers work for stem plants and floaters mainly. Root feeders, like swords, need root tabs to do their best, but they can survive without them. Survival is not good growth though.. survival is what you have now. And if you are leaving lights on even longer to try to grow algae, and don't feed, they're not going to improve.
Is your light just a normal T12 or what ever?
More substrate, root tabs, Flourish and Flourish Excel. Flourish Excel is sort of a substitute for C02, its liquid carbon, not as good as C02 but way better than nothing.
Oh I didn't realise you actually wanted algae, disregard my other comment in that case, you really should consider laying out a substrate for plants underneath your sand, I use plant growth substrate by tropica but I live in the UK so don't know if you have that where you live.
Don't use co2 if you actually want algae. Your light seems fine, you should also add liquid fertiliser as your plants will appreciate it as well as the algae you are looking for.
Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice
I have never used root tabs but I guess it's the same as the substrate, you can try getting them
Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice
To get algae to grow keep the lights on for 12-14 hrs a day.
In my planted community tank I am using CaribSea FloraMax. Others use CaribSea Eco Complete, but I couldn't find any by me so I had to go for the floramax. Both of these substrates are designed specifically for plants. They come with some nutrients, but they are great at catching and holding nutrients.
Your light that you have now should be good for low light plants.
Roots tabs are similar to weekend fish feeders, but you push the root tab into the substrate and it slowly releases the nutrients over a period of months. Use root tabs with plants like water wisteria, amazon sword, and anacharis (elodea). I would remove some of the water before adding root tabs unless you quickly get them under the substrate. The ones I got started breaking apart after hitting the water.
Sent from my SCH-I545 using Aquarium Advice mobile app
Root tabs and liquid ferts will def. Help..
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Aquarium Advice mobile app
You want algae and I hate the stuff!! We need a way to somehow magically swap the algae into your tank, you could always find someone who has a bad algae problem on there plants etc and "borrow" some of there decorations and plants. That might help??
Sent from my iPhone using my fat fingers covered in chocolate...