Really lame plants

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chris_topher

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Mar 28, 2008
Messages
13
Im getting really frustrated since my plants are not growing compared to other peoples tanks where in 1 week their wisteria is like 3 inches longer. Im getting a bigger tank (probably 50g) soon and I dont want to have to buy more plants, but instead just grow them and take separations/clippings.

My tank is 5g, 1 betta, aquaclear 20, 50w heater, 9w fluorescent, ammonia: 0, nitrite: 0, nitrate: too low to be read, ph: about 7.6-8.0

Light is on about 12-14 hours a day, I dose a little more than required with the regular Flourish once a week.

I have 3 Amazon Swords, and 3 now very small strands of Wisteria. They all grow really slow and about half the new growth leaves on the swords end up with brown spots. Basically what happens is they die as much as they grow.

Please post any suggestions of what is wrong! I really want nice big healthy plants for my 5g and my new one that im getting soon, thanks! :fadein:

Edit: The substrate is not enriched. It is just regular natural rock. Also, I recently changed the substrate depth from 1 1/4 inch to 2 inches, hoping this might help, but not able to tell yet.

EDIT:
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Blue :D
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im not 100% sure but i think you need to dose iron with your flourish stuff. with your new bigger tank maybe you can set up a DIY Co2 system and just dose iron and potassium
 
The reason your plants are not growing fast is mainly because of the amount of light you have over the tank.

9 watts is not much light at all.
 
I suspect the mail culprit is lack of nutrition. Your substrate isn't giving those plants anything, and if your nitrates are really zero then the water column isn't giving your plants anything either. Essentially you are starving your plants to death.

You definitely want to put a couple of root tabs in the tank, and you also probably want to hold off and do water changes *less* often so that you have some nitrates in the tank as well. I know people who take the plants in their tanks seriously enough that they will actually DOSE nitrates into the water column to 20 ppm! Any typical aquarium fish will not have any problems at all with 20 ppm nitrates in the water so hold off on water changes until you are seeing levels higher than that.

Dosing with a little Flourish Excel to provide carbon and trace elements would be a good idea too. And don't gravel vac near your plants, as the mulm that gathers in the substrate there will eventually become nutrients your plants will use.
 
Your plants aren't growing "compared to other peoples tanks" because:

you don't have a carbon source
gravel substrate/no root fertilizer
nitrates are 0
inadequate lighting

You're lacking the 3 things plants require, good lighting, carbon, and nutrition (N, P, K), and expecting your plants to grow like others' setups who supply those necessities.

Invest in better equipment, switch to low-light plants (anubias, java fern, bolbitis), or simply be content with what you have.
 
The reason your plants are not growing fast is mainly because of the amount of light you have over the tank.

9 watts is not much light at all.

Your plants aren't growing "compared to other peoples tanks" because:

you don't have a carbon source
gravel substrate/no root fertilizer
nitrates are 0
inadequate lighting

You're lacking the 3 things plants require, good lighting, carbon, and nutrition (N, P, K), and expecting your plants to grow like others' setups who supply those necessities.

Invest in better equipment, switch to low-light plants (anubias, java fern, bolbitis), or simply be content with what you have.

Exactly. Something that a lot of people miss is that these smaller aquariums need a lot more light to reach the various lighting levels than the WPG "rule" would indicate. I've got 36WPG over my 5.5 gallon and would probably classify it as somewhere around medium light maybe a little better.
 
I would suggest pulling out what you have and getting some of the low light plants like java fern or java moss maybe some of the low light crypts and some anubias would work. I would definately do a little research on the plants before you buy them that will save you some money and the mess.
Good luck and keep trying plants are great for you fish.
 
I suspect the mail culprit is lack of nutrition. Your substrate isn't giving those plants anything, and if your nitrates are really zero then the water column isn't giving your plants anything either. Essentially you are starving your plants to death.

You definitely want to put a couple of root tabs in the tank, and you also probably want to hold off and do water changes *less* often so that you have some nitrates in the tank as well. I know people who take the plants in their tanks seriously enough that they will actually DOSE nitrates into the water column to 20 ppm! Any typical aquarium fish will not have any problems at all with 20 ppm nitrates in the water so hold off on water changes until you are seeing levels higher than that.

Dosing with a little Flourish Excel to provide carbon and trace elements would be a good idea too. And don't gravel vac near your plants, as the mulm that gathers in the substrate there will eventually become nutrients your plants will use.

I do 40-50% every week and a half, I dont think thats very often at all. Also, it is 2 days after my water change, just checked nitrates, they are 0, and the previous time I got a 0, was just before a water change. I think someone on here told me your nitrates will show 0 because the plants have taken it all out of the water.

I appreciate the (almost brutally) honest answers. Even though I do alot of reading on this stuff, im still fairly new and still following LFS advice. This tank is what they set me up with.

So heres what im going to do:
-Get root tabs
-Get Flourish Excel
-Look into lighting, might be hard to change the fixture though
-Not talk with LFS people anymore for advice

Thank you all
 
nitrates will show 0 because the plants have taken it all out of the water.

and that's exactly why you need to dose nitrogen... the plants need it to grow

I appreciate the (almost brutally) honest answers.

I don't like to be that way, but why have other people make the same mistakes myself and others have made and waste money.

-Look into lighting, might be hard to change the fixture though
-Not talk with LFS people anymore for advice

You'll probably end up with a whole next lighting setup, if that's the route you decide.
LFS people tend to be hit or (way-off) miss. Read more on your own, and you'll be able to recognize (and correct) employees when they are just blowing sunshine up your....
 
On the lighting level -

It has to do with looking at light in a more real way. Using lumens output, and comparing it to the wpg rule, shows how badly the wpg rule is broken on smaller tanks, and very large tanks, too.

Examples to put it in perspective:

A 55g with 3 wpg equates to about 5 wpg over a 10g when you compare LSI, Lumens per Square Inch... and the "wpg" number climbs, rather dramatically, the smaller you get.

My 2.5g is over 10 wpg - and it acts about like my 180g does, which has only 1.73 wpg - which acts about like my 75g, which has 2.88 wpg. WPG rules are pretty lousy, in other words. ;)
 
Something you might try regarding the light...

Go to your LFS and see if they sell hoods, designed for your size tank, with INCANDESCENT ("regular") lightbulbs. Now, before you freak out, incandescent lightbulbs are horrible and worthless for growing aquarium plants. But you won't be using them...

After buying the hood, then go to any hardware store (or a K-Mart, Wal-Mart, whatever) and buy a screw-in compact fluorescent (CF) bulb. This is a great way to boost lighting, and do it far more cheaply than any of your other options. I did this on a 10 gal tank I had, and it was utterly amazing the difference it made.

Here is just a sample of the kind of bulb I am talking about. Note I have no affiliation with that website or anything, just did a google search to show you an example.
Compact Fluorescent - 18 Watt - 75 Watt Equal - Full Spectrum Daylight 6500k - TCP 28918-65 Light Bulb

The only thing you need to be sure is that you get a bulb in the right "color" range. Many household bulbs are "warm white" or "cool white" bulbs (somewhere in the 2700K to 4100K range). Those won't work. You need something in the 5000k to 10,000K range (which go by various names, usually "full spectrum"). And of course, before you buy, make sure you take a look at the underside of the hood and confirm there is enough room under there for the bulb to fit.

By the way, what is important is the actual wattage of the bulb, not what they talk about as the "equivalent watts." So for example, the link I gave you is to a 6500K, 18 Watt bulb, which would give you roughly 3 WPG of lighting over your tank.

The nice thing is that with a standard light bulb screw-in fitting, you can get CF bulbs from as low as 2 Watts to as high as 200 Watts. And the bulbs typically cost only $8 or so each. So you can buy one, use it a while, and then if you decide you want either more or less lighting, it's simply a matter of going back to the store (or online) and getting one of a different wattage.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LAST, back to the water change idea...40-50% change every week & a half seems like overkill to me, if all you have is one betta in a 5 gal tank. In general you want to avoid "large volume" water changes, as you run the risk of shocking your fish. Given your setup, a 25% change every-other-week will probably be plenty. And like others said, if you have ZERO nitrates in your water, nitrogen is going to be a limiting factor in your plant growth. You want...no, you NEED...to have some nitrates.
 
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