Rotting plants

[ozmo]

I have recently added several Val and a few other species of plants to one of my tanks and within a couple of weeks have noticed rotting and breaking on some plants, particularly with the Val and occasionally even with some of the smaller Anubius.

I only use Flourish full dose once a week and there are several small snails but no fish in the tank (90g).

Here's a few pics to show you what I mean...

 

[JustinKScott]

Looks like a combination of hungry snails and lack of nutrients.

Are you using white non-fertalized sand?

What kind of snails?

Flourish is a micronutrient solution; so there is a lot of other nutrients that you are missing.

How much light? Co2?

 

[ozmo]

Looks like a combination of hungry snails and lack of nutrients.

Are you using white non-fertalized sand?

What kind of snails?

Flourish is a micronutrient solution; so there is a lot of other nutrients that you are missing.

How much light? Co2?

The substrate is crushed coral.

Not sure what type of snails. Little brown ones with nondescript looking shells apart from one snail which had like a hermit shell. I have removed all snails I could find and pretty sure I got them all.

The plants get about 8 hours of florescent light per day. Purplish tube and a daylight tube.

I don't use any CO2 just Seachem Flourish.

Obviously I don't know much about aquatic plants and how to best maintain them so any advice would be great?

I'm not into do it yourself setups but am willing spend money on solutions.

Do I really need CO2? Do I need different lighting?

Cheers,
ozmo

 

[JustinKScott]

>I'm not into do it yourself setups but am willing spend money on solutions.

Excellent, me too.

Its good that you are fertilizing. Flourish is just a micro nutrient, it is insufficient at growing plants. It will help so keep it up, but there are more important things.

Let's start with lighting..
It's hard to tell what kind of bulbs do you have? Take them out and examine them. You'll be looking for things like:
the type of bulb.. T5ho, t5, t8, cf, etc
Wattage.. 20w 55w etc
Color temp.. 6500k, 10000k, Actinic, etc

Do you have a water test kit? What are you water params?

CO2, i can't grow vals without co2. If you have the means I'd get co2. Your tank is as big as mine, so DO NOT buy the off the shelf co2 thing from petsmart. It's only good for a few gallons. If you are going to do it right, start looking for a 10lbs co2 bottle on craigslist.

Ive never used rushed coral, but it sounds like you and I are in the same boat. Our soil is barren; nothing wants to grow in it. We will combat that with ferts, but lets get the lighting and co2 in place first.

 

[Coursair]

Crushed Coral is usually used for Saltwater or African Cichlid tanks. I would not use it for plants.

Cheap substrates are black diamond blasting sand or pool filter sand. Either can be used over organic potting soil or alone.

My newest tank is blasting sand, BUT I put down Osmocote + gel capsules first.

You can try adding root tabs of some sort but I really doubt you'll have success with coral substrate. You can check for plants that tolerate high PH.

Plain gravel can even grow plants with some fish poop as fertilizer



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