First Dirted Tank.. Issues

[Trickerie]

Hello all,

I've recently set up my first dirted tank. Here are some quick stats:

Tank: 25 gallons 19" height
Lighting: 2 dual bulb t5 fixtures
Substrate: expert gardener potting mix capped with safe t sorb
PH: 7.6
KH: 5d
GH: 5d

Now to the issues. I'm not seeing any new growths for the most part, and the few newer looking leaves on the swords are going brown/yellow. My water wisteria totally rotted away in a matter of days. It turned to mush. My other stem plants seem to be takin the same route. My moneywort seems to be branching up a little bit, but the leaves on the bottom are brown and falling off. Some of the newer leaves seem to be taking the same path. It's disheartening because I really wanted to succeed in this, but none of my plants seem to be doing anything but dying.

My soil is as close to 1" as I could get it. The capped layer is only enough to keep the soil down.

What can I be missing? Is my lighting insufficient? Is it too much? What can be causing my stem plants to just rot away and die?

I'm open to all advice and suggestions

Thank you

 

[rkilling1]

How did you prepare the soil?

 

[Trickerie]

I simply spread it around and removed any big pieces I saw. I didn't mineralized it.

 

[ZHiTcH41]

Get on YouTube and look up Dustin's fishtanks and he has list of videos on how to do planted tanks