Help with plants PLEASE!

[anasfire23]

Ok well I recently got a 50G tank and put pretty much all the plants from my 15g in there (god knows how my fish swam around with ALL those plants in the 15g) and have started to notice the leaves on the plants turning yellow. Well that is on the green looking plants eg Amazon Sword and Jungle Val. The Elodea looks a little yellow but not overly and the Ludwigia looks fine. The Jungle val in particular had entire leaves that are yellow where as the Amazon sword just seems to have more of a yellow/brown tinge happening.


Has anyone got any ideas as to what might be causing this so I can correct it asap? I did have a bubble stone in there for a little while but have since removed it. Could it be that the bubble stone was injecting too much O2 into the water and the plants were starving for CO2? I'm hoping they'll pick up now that the bubble stone is gone but need to know if it could possibly be anything else that's the problem? I don't have a CO2 system in place (no did I when they were in my 15g and they grew fine) but they do have a lot more light now than they used to. Water temp is 28C (82F) and for stocking levels refer to my signature.

Anything else that you need to know please just post here and ask, I'll try to provide the info!

Thanks

Edit: I also fertilise them with a fish safe liquid fert with the recommended weekly dose.

[flamingo]

All I can really think of is the plants are lacking a certain nutrient/s, or lack of lights. At least in the case of Jungle Val, it's pretty hard to kill, but discoloration is usually from missing iron, potassium, etc. Maybe Damon can help out more in that area lol.

Anyway you can tell all the parameters, substrate, exact lighting, and the exact fert. being dosed?

[anasfire23]

Originally Posted by flamingo

All I can really think of is the plants are lacking a certain nutrient/s, or lack of lights. At least in the case of Jungle Val, it's pretty hard to kill, but discoloration is usually from missing iron, potassium, etc. Maybe Damon can help out more in that area lol.

Anyway you can tell all the parameters, substrate, exact lighting, and the exact fert. being dosed?

The lighting is just a home made light dome thing, it has 2 fluorescent power saving globes it in and they are 18W globes. I will have a proper aquatic fluoro box soon, my ex is making it for me but he has been flat out at work so hasn't had time. I have the dome thing on for about 12 hours a day and the jungle val has gone nuts since I put it in this tank. It's already grown around 9" to the surface of the water in only 2 weeks! I'm using Aqua Master Plant Food which is phosphate free and is "with Trace Elements" whatever that means. It says to use 5ml per 50L(13g) of water but I think I may have over dosed it a little recently. I forgot which day I'd last fertilised it so when I did a small 10% water change I re dosed with the weekly rate. Is it likely that this is the cause? I did a 30% water change today and didn't add any fertiliser thinking that may also be the problem so I'm going wait and see. The substrate is just regular tank gravel with broken sea shells mixed through. It's the same kind of gravel I had in the 15G and never had problems with the plants in that.

It says on the bottle of fertiliser that it eliminates the phosphate and includes high iron levels to help eliminate the growth of algae.

I have a feeling it is due to the bubble stone I had in there also. I knew it was a bad idea when I put it in there but thought it would be ok coz it was a small stone in a large tank. I'm hoping they don't die on me and give me time to rectify what has happened. I've grown accustomed to them!

Also just as a side note, a CO2 infusion set up is WAY out of my budget and a DIY one is too complicated for me. I'm hoping they will be ok with nothing just as they were in the 15G.

I've attached a pic where u can see the amazon sword and val. The sword looks ok in the pic but if u look carefully you can see the leaves aren't right.

Edit: Will add photo's soon, PC is playing up.

[MyraVan]

Originally Posted by anasfire23

The lighting is just a home made light dome thing, it has 2 fluorescent power saving globes it in and they are 18W globes.

That isn't much light. You say they had more light in the 15g? You must have had very little light in that tank.... I would suspect that low light has something to do with your problems.

A good amount of light to aim for is 2 watts per gallon, or 100 w for your 50g tank. You have 36 now.

How much light will you have when your ex makes this new lighting setup for you?

[anasfire23]

You misunderstand what I said about my 15G, they had NO light in my 15g tank at all, except a 25W table lamp that I occasionally had on at night which was pointing in the general direction of the tank. The light hood that my ex is going to make will fit a proper aquarium fluoro which has all the proper light spectrum etc built into it. I can't remember what the wattage is, he just took me there to pay for it all lol. I did, however, put the tube into my bathroom fixture (when it was here as they are the same size) and turned it on and it lit up the room really well, actually better than the regular tube that goes in it. Our bathroom is fairly large too btw, it has the toilet in there as well as shower/bath :P. He said he will be painting the inside of the box white to maximise the reflection of the light etc... All technical jargon as far as I was concerned.

You can see in the 1st pic (other than it's been eaten) that there is a kinda brown substance on the leaves, in the 2nd picture the yellowing at the end of the leave and in the 3rd picture you can see entire leaves of the Val that are yellow.

[Damon]

A couple of possible issues here........
Not enough light is one.......
Adaptation is the most likely. Plants need time to adapt to the new tank (one can usually see this over the first 2-3 weeks)
Nutrient poor substrate (I would dose flourish and excel in the least)

You should try to get at least 2 watts per gallon over that tank. I love the footprint of the 50 gallon. The extra depth allows for great aquascaping.
2x96 pc would be great.

Dosing newly setup tanks always speeds up recovery.
Your tank sounds low on macros.
Hope this helps.

[anasfire23]

Um, the part about the light made sense....the rest sounded too much like technical jargon! sorry hehe. I'm hoping my ex can whack together the light hood tomorrow so at least I can start getting them the proper lighting asap. I'm also going to pull the sword and effected Val out to day and give them a bit of a trim. Well the amazon is getting a root trim and the outer leaves pulled off. Give the newer ones in the centre a chance to grow. I think part of the Val's problem is also that one or more of my fish species have been eating it before it can grow lol. I've got one bunch in there that is down to 3 shoots and they are only 3' long! Poor thing hehe.

Thanks for the help Damon!

[mousey]

if you use regular household flurescent bulbs make sure you get the daylight ones, not the soft white. Or get ones that says it gives noonday light.
Different companies advertize the daylight bulbs different ways. The daylight bulbs actually have a higher kelvin rate and lumen rate than the soft white. Technical jargon again but important to know.
i use just the household bulbs and they work great and are much cheaper than bulbs made for the fish trade.
And don't forget to change bulbs at least once a year. The intensity( not brightness) wears off by about 50% and the plants will not do as well and the algae starts to grow.
I now have a container of slightly used bulbs.
I have 6 planted tanks and change my bulbs yearly. There is lots of life in them yet.
I will probably not have to buy bulbs for lamps for many years but do have to buy for the tanks!
I plan on leaving the used bulbs to my kids in my will!!

[anasfire23]

LOL Mousey! I never said the technical jargon wasn't good to know, just that it sounded too technical for me to really understand!! hehe. I'm going to replace the bulbs in it next pay day coz the light dome thing will be going on top of my 15g tank when my new longer one is made for the 50g tank. I don't know how long those globes have been in it, they came with the tank which I've only had for 2 weeks now!


I will replace the globes though, thanks for the info Mousey!

[Damon]

I will try to simplify what I said and make a correction....

1x96 pc will be fine, not 2x96..........

Plants need food in the way of Macros (potassium (K), nitrogen (NO3) and Phosphorous (PO4). They also need micros (too many to list but elements such as copper, sulfur, magnesium, calcium ect....)

These can be readily bought commercially in the forms of flouris or tropica's Mastergrow and many others made by companies such as Kent.

CO2 and light are the 2 most important needs of plants. I cannot stress that enough................

Get the light up as soon as you can. Then work with the ferts. CO2 can be injected via DIY or pressurized. Start with DIY to learn the basics. The other option can be costly. Be sure to prune dieing leaves. THey only stress the plant out and will not recover.

[anasfire23]

OK, I drastically thinned the Sword out today and gave the roots a little trim. It's gone from having 12 leaves to now having 5. When I was taking them off I noticed that all the ones that looked ill were only hanging on by threads! Something has been chewing on the very bottoms of the stems!!! I'm hoping it'll get a decent chance to grow now (and I haven't sent it into shock or anything by removing more than half it's leaves!). I'm slowly finding all the little mystery snails in the tank and removing them but they hide so well! I don't want the snails eating my plants any more! I also pulled off the dead yellow looking val leaves. Hopefully my ex will make my light tomorrow, I asked him just to encase the fluoro fixture in some wood and attach a switch so I can at least whack that on top and have some light for them until he makes the proper 3.7ft hood...we'll have to wait and see if he actually does it!

[Pac-Man]

As already stated you need more light. Some of the macros-nitrogen, phosphorous-come from fish food/waste. However you should still dose a form of potassium-either through a product like Seachem Potassium or dry fertilizers. 1x96 would give you about 2 wpg. DIY CO2 will suffice, but as you will see, it gets annoying on a tank that large. Youll a decent fleet of C02 bottles to get any sufficient amount of carbon into the tank. im saving up for a pressurized system for my planted tank. If you did 2x96, you would have to go pressurized. Good luck.