Plants Turning Brown

[LiQuiD]

Live Plant Noob here,
...So my tank is not a typical planted tank with soil substrate. It is simply sand with live plants. I am adding Tetra Plant Food once every other day for my 55 Gallon. I have a dual T5 Aqueon light on 8-12 hours a day. I have noticed one of my plants is getting brown spots, and another is turning yellow and brown. A couple of my other plants are doing fine though. Am I doing something wrong to keep them alive? Thanks for

 

[evil Nick]

Do you know the names of the plants not looking good?
Also I think adding fert every other day may be too much. If the plants are new maybe they are just acclimating. Some of mine went through an unhealthy stage before booming back when first added.

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[BBradbury]

Tank Plants

Live Plant Noob here,
...So my tank is not a typical planted tank with soil substrate. It is simply sand with live plants. I am adding Tetra Plant Food once every other day for my 55 Gallon. I have a dual T5 Aqueon light on 8-12 hours a day. I have noticed one of my plants is getting brown spots, and another is turning yellow and brown. A couple of my other plants are doing fine though. Am I doing something wrong to keep them alive? Thanks for

Hello LiQ...

A few things to think about. New plants take time to get used to new water conditions. The old leaves tend to die back because they're used to the old conditions. Most times, new leaves more used to the new water, will grow. Sand compacts, so there's not much water flow to carry oxygen and nutrients to the plant roots. Root tabs may help.

Water that constantly moves through the filter, loses nutrients. Large, weekly water changes will keep the mineral levels high. Plants will appreciate pure water as much as the fish.

Aquatic plants are tropical and used to longer hours of daylight. I keep the tank lights on timers and set them at 12 hours on and 12 off.

B

 

[Nocx]

I was wondering the same about my plant.. only 1 of the 3 is like this.

 

[Angela1108]

Hard to tell but it looks like you have diatoms/algae starting to grow on them. Hard to tell with the pics and I am on my phone so on a PC the pics would be better. Upping the light time isn't going to make a difference other than letting algae grow. Anything more than 8 hours is pretty much wasted.


Can you get pics that are more close up of the plant that has the brown?


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[LiQuiD]

Do you know the names of the plants not looking good?
Also I think adding fert every other day may be too much. If the plants are new maybe they are just acclimating. Some of mine went through an unhealthy stage before booming back when first added.

Im sorry I dont. Im bad with this and will try to be better with plant names for future issues. Here is an image of my tank.. The problem plants are the small darker green plants you see scattered all over the tank, and the fern like plant on the right with the white and green stripes. My anubis, sword, and anacharis are good.

 

[tommyk]

I'm lookin at pics on a phone so I may be wrong but the dark green grass like plant looks like mondo grass. If it is it's not a true aquatic plant and will eventually die. I've got caught with this big stores sell it as aquatic. Also the striped plant looks like a houseplant I had which isn't aquatic either( but not 100% on this one)


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[Caliban07]

Live Plant Noob here,

...So my tank is not a typical planted tank with soil substrate. It is simply sand with live plants. I am adding Tetra Plant Food once every other day for my 55 Gallon. I have a dual T5 Aqueon light on 8-12 hours a day. I have noticed one of my plants is getting brown spots, and another is turning yellow and brown. A couple of my other plants are doing fine though. Am I doing something wrong to keep them alive? Thanks for

Hi liquid. Don't worry about the sand it's perfectly capable of growing plants in.

In order for plants to be healthy and grow well you need to meet their demands, water (h2o), light, carbon and nutrients.

You already have the water. The type of light dictates how much carbon and nutrients are required. T5 lights provide medium light roughly.

The carbon is used as an energy source and the nutrients are used to repair and aid new growth.

Nutrients are split in to macro and micro where the macro nutrients nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) are needed in larger quantities. There are other macros too like calcium, magnesium etc.

The micros are things like iron, copper, chloride, zinc and are needed in small quantities but steady supply. If you look on the back of the tetra bottle you may find that it only contains micro nutrients which means you are not getting macros nutrients and you don't have a carbon source (no point having all those nutrients if the plant doesn't have the energy to utilise them)

You can buy liquid carbon online. Seachem flourish excel I think.

Sometimes tap water contains ample amounts of nutrients which is why some people have success without even using fertilisers. Especially if they use low lighting and low light requiring plants (less demand for nutrients)

For macros I buy dry fertilisers which is a powdered form and can be mixed in bottles and kept in the fridge. Way cheaper and lasts much longer.

Hope some of this helps.


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