New plants apparently starting to become transparent

[teamgs]

Greetings,
I planted my new plants this past Friday, and today, it looks as if some are already turning transparent.

The plants that are turning are the Jungle and corkscrew vals, and the spatterdock.

The plants that still look fine are: anacharis, java fern, ludwigia repens, annubias frazerii and nana, java moss, pygmy and walkeri crypts, onions, and dwarf sag.

The lighting is 96W dual daylight CF on 12 hours a day, as well as 96 W actininc.

Here are my water values:

pH - 7.6
NH4 and NH2 - 0
NH3 - 30 mg/l
NH3 - Tap water - 10 mg/l
gH - 40 mg/l
kH - 100 mg/l
Fe Free - 0.0
Fe Chelated - 0.1 mg/l
P04 - 0.4 mg/l

After testing, opened up my newly arrived chemicals and dosed with Flourish, Flourish + Fe, Flourish + Pottasium, and Flourish + Phosphorous.

Anything else I should be doing? It may just be stress from transport (Got them from AZgardens via overnight delivery), but this is my first efforts with a planted tank, and I would like to avoid a massive die off.

Regards,

Gary

 

[Purrbox]

Vals tend to like more light than you are providing them. You've only got low light over that tank, and they tend to prefer at least medium light. Most of the rest of your plants that are doing well, are low light plants. There's a couple that aren't, so it may just mean that your plants need some time to rebound from the stress of being shipped to you.

 

[teamgs]

Thanks!

Sigh....all the days of research, and I can't see how when it came time to purchase, I missed the lighing requirements of the Vals! I was blinded by the size, as I was looking for tall background plants. I wonder if I should put them up in the barter wsection here, before they all go bad. Most of them still look very nice

I may just swap out my actinic with a SmartPaq dual daylight/actinic for another 45 watts of daylight. I like the look of the actininc on fish colors, so I would like to keep at least 45 watts of it.


Regards,

Gary

 

[Purrbox]

If you swap out the actinic bulb for a 50/50 you should be able to grow quite a few more plants without having to get into heavy fertilizing or CO2. If you really like the look of the Vals and want to keep them, this is probably what I'd do.

 

[teamgs]

Thanks! Bulb will be ordered today!

Will be here in three days. Hopefully, the Vals don't deteriorate too much in the interim.

I guess that the 135 total daylight watts, coupled with the "fudge" factor in the WPG rule for CF bulbs, will put me in the range of low-medium lighting.

Regards,

Gary