Small brown spots on plants (hygros?)

[jtd1216]

I've noticed that a couple of my plants (i think are some sort of hygro) have tiny brown spots on them after planting them about 4 days ago.... i read somewhere that it could be due to higher nitrate levels, but i ran a test and 0ppm. Any other ideas? My tank is a 20g high without CO2 with eco complete substrate

 

[azn_fishy55]

How much light do you have?Dosing any ferts?What fish do you have?

 

[jtd1216]

well, after reading the "updating wpg rule" post, i'm not quite sure now. I have a Coralife fixture with two 14w T5s.. Seemingly i have less than 2 wpg, but the recent post says otherwise.

I'm not dosing any ferts right now, I just started up the tank and planted the plants about a 4 days ago. a few people said that it wouldn't be necessary for quite sometime when using eco-complete to dose

Lastly, I haven't added any fish yet, i'm waiting a week or so then i will add a few SAEs

 

[Purrbox]

Is it hard to remove or does it brush of easily?

Brush of easy = Diatoms, common in new tanks and will go away on their own if a few weeks.

Hard to remove = BBA (Black Brush Algae, Black Beard Algae, etc), a real pain and often caused by fluctuating CO2 levels.

 

[BlazerFRS]

i read somewhere that it could be due to higher nitrate levels, but i ran a test and 0ppm.

Oppm Nitrate is BAD in a planted tank... you'll only encourage algae. You need to add nitrate; shoot for a target of 10-15 ppm.

Read the fertilization sticky at the top of this forum for more info

 

[jtd1216]

good thing you brought that to my attention, thanks... (a bit of a noob) is this possibly my problem? Btw, the spots do not rub off, they seem to be brown spots in the leaves

 

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

definately try getting your nitrates up. if the tank is small enough then seachem nitrogen would be a good purchase, or KNO3 if you want to start dry ferts from gregwatson.com.

Sorry if there is some confusion, I'm working on typing up more detail to it, it's a theory, not a "rule".. but it does seem to make sense.. (at least to me, but I always like others to agree )