Black dots on my plants

[drachina]

I am about to order Kh2po4 for the green dot algea I have in my tank. Since a few weeks ago, my tank developed unremovable black dots on my plants only. Do you have any idea what this could be? I own my tank for over 10 years now and never had this black dot problem before, but than I always had a problem keeping my plants alive. Only recently I figured out they need fertilizer regularly, doh!!! Anyway, since adding 3ml of CO2 booster daily and 5 ml flourish weekly, after a weekly 30% water change to my 30 gal breeder tank and every 6 weeks flourish tabs, they are doing well and are growing in the substrate. For my water change I used filter water from the faucet, but since it has no phosphate in it I switched to straight faucet water, adding a few drops of prime ahead of time. I have 2 led light strips 35 watts each, so its not very bright. My water spite is dying though, not sure why? my phosphate levels are 0, other levels are: ph 7.2, phosphate 0, kh 35.8ppm, gh 179ppm, nitrate and nitrite 0. All are tested with API. All my plants are low to medium light. I have 7 neons, 4 dwarf gourami, 3 ottos, 2 true siamese algae eaters, 4 amino shrimp, i ghost shrimp and 2medium snails, and a mild infestation of maylasian snails.
I know this is a lot but it seems I need some serious help and the right products to finally balance my tank and keep everyone happy, including myself.
So, I would appreciate any suggestions.
Thank you for your help,
Iris

 

[Hooked on Fish]

Hi Iris,

I've had similar problems with trying to grow plants in the past. The black dots will likely be a type of algae. The limiting factor in algae growth is usually iron, which you are adding by dosing Flourish.

To grow healthy plants you need to keep light, nutrient and CO2 in balance. A few things you can do include:

1. add plant nutrient to the substrate rather than the water column.
2. change your lighting schedule to 5 hours on, 4 hours off, followed by 5 hours on. After about 5 hours the plants will have used all of the available CO2 and stopped photosynthesizing. Only algae can grow at low CO2 levels.
3. Continue the daily dose of Flourish Excel (or similar). Apart from assisting plant growth it will inhibit algae growth.
4. Attach slow growing plants like Anubius or Java fern on drift wood or rocks so that they can be removed from the tank for cleaning. Dipping them in a solution of 1 part bleach to 20 parts water for a minute or so will kill the algae and you will notice it will disappear from the leaves after a couple of days. Make sure that you rinse well before returning to the tank or you'll kill your fish!!!
5. Get some fast growing bunch plants like Wisteria. As it grows cut the new growth off and replant. Leave the original stems in and they should re-shoot. Fast growing plants remove nutrient from the water out competing the algae.

Finally if you're serious about growing plants I suggest reading Ecology of the Planted Aquarium by Diana Walstad. Even if you don't decide to go down the soil substrate path there is a lot of good information that will help you understand why some things work and other things don't.

Hope this helps. Below is a picture of my planted aquarium set up using the Walstad method.

 

[DaleV87]

Beautiful tank.


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