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8 months and all my plants do is melt


Aussie
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We started our aquarium in February and we have been trying plants since it cycled and fish moved in. Our fish have done wonderfully but our plants keep melting and never coming back. It is a 55gal for the last 3 weeks I have been dosing easy green 2 times a week 5 or 6 pumps. The light is on 6-8 hours a day. Some plants do good for a while and then start failing and others just fail from day one. What are we doing wrong?

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I don't think you're necessarily doing anything wrong. I tried a whole bunch of "beginner friendly" plants when I started my tank in December. Some just didn't do well for me or died completely. Some are just now starting to show some nice growth. It was frustrating but it just takes time and a whole bunch of patience. Every tank is different so you might just need to find what does well and stick with that. 

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I don't think you are doing anything wrong other than a possible lack of consistency.  Consistency is important. "5 or 6 pumps" of EG and "6-8 hours of light" make it harder for you to identify problems.

Some Suggestions:  

Test your tap water, and if possible have the LFS test your aquarium water.  Your testing procedure could be off or the test kit might be off.  If the fish are happy and healthy I would be careful not to make too many water related changes. 

Your pictures show some plant damage and a lot of new growth and roots, so the extra EG seems to be helping. 

if you haven't already, buy a timer for your light .  I would start at 8 hours, and work from there.

Your fourth picture shows what I think is a Wisteria stem  with new growth and roots on the top portion.  I would carefully cut above the third segment and let the cutting float.   The bottom half is going to rot off anyway,  but with the extra EG and light both pieces should do well.

Keep in mind that those beautifully planted tanks that you see rarely mention all of the time, effort and failures required to get to that point.  Enjoy the trip. 

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On 10/17/2021 at 11:44 AM, Aussie said:

Guppy, rummy nose tetra, zebra danio, angel fish and a German blue ram.

Okay, that's good. All those fish enjoy lower pH, perfect! Plants love low KH too!

Lower KH to around 3 or 4dKH-There are several ways to do this, but the easiest way is to cut your source water with Distilled water. Then I would grab some Seachem Equilibrium, that will boost your GH back up as 5dGH is a good spot to be. Equilibrium also adds Fe and K, both of which Easy Green is low on.

Let's assume after substrate and aqua scape, that your tank is 50 gallons. It's probably lower, but for this example, let's use 50.

You use 10 to 12 pumps per week, let's just use 10 pumps here. That's only 6ppm NO3, .324ppm P, 4ppm K and .068Fe(as Proxy). That is very low. 

Personally, I would double what you are dosing and look to boost K and Fe via Equilibrium (after lowering KH). 

Do weekly water changes, around 25 to 30%, 50% is better but that's up to you. 50% will allow you to target nutrients easily as you can never exceed 2 times the amount you dose. So if you dose 12ppm NO3, did weekly 50% water changes you would never have more than 24ppm NO3. Keep in mind, that bio load adds NO3, but assume the water column is inert. 

FYI, for my non CO2 tanks, I dose 12ppm NO3, 2.2ppm PO4, 10ppm K and .5ppm Fe (proxy).

All that is TL/DR, but honestly, lower KH, boost with Equilibrium, double your dosing and I bet you will see a big difference.

 

 

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