Plant leaves dieing

[Ramirez]

I have a low tech planted 55 gallon tank which has been planted for about 3 months. The plants have been growing well until the last two weeks. The older leaves of the Amazon swords have become yellow, the whole leaf. The new leaves are becoming very light green and most of them are becoming transparent.

I have 2 40 Watt bulbs over the tank so it is about 1.5W/gal. I dose Fluorish twice and a week. I was dosing Fluorish iron 1 to 2 times per week for about 3 to 4 weeks, but I started to get a bad outbreak of thread algae, so I stopped for now.

Of note, about the same time I have started getting an outbreak of BGA algae in my Hornwart and Cabomba leaves at the top of the water.

Everything I have read here points me to low nitrates as a cause for both of these things. However, I bought a nitrate test and it was 5-10 ppm.

ph is about 7.0 (6.8 in the morning and about 7.1 in the evening). Water quality must be pretty good because I have a pair of Kribs that just bred.

If anyone has any ideas about what is wrong (what nutrient is deficient, etc.) please help me out.

[djlen]

You need to balance out your fertilizers.
You're dosing Traces, but not K,N and P.
If your N is reading between 5 - 10 it may be unnecessary to dose it. You may be getting it in your tap water. But P should read 1.5 - 1.0 and you definitely need to start dosing K.
Pick up some 'No Salt' of 'New Salt' at your grocery store. It's a salt substitute containing KCl(potassium chloride).
Pick up some Fleet's Enema at your pharmacy. It's KH2PO4. It will take care of your phosphates.
For a low light tank you only need to keep small amounts of N and P in your tank to balance it. These two should be tested regularly before adding more.
Dosing K is necessary for all plants and it's hard to overdose it.
You have enough light, but yes, from your post you have a nutrient deficiency.
See the sticky at the top of the Plants page for further info and tips that have been accumulated here.

Len

[Ramirez]

Thanks for the ideas.

I would think I have plenty of phosphates. Wouldn't I get enough from fish food?

I thought the BGA outbreak recently was from too much phosphate.

Any thoughts on adding Fluorish potassium instead? Does that carry the chloride ion, too?

[Tempest]

I don't think you necessarily get much phosphate from fish foods anymore and you may not have any in your water supply. You'll need to test to find out. Flourish Potassium can be used of course but for a larger tank it can get quite expensive.

[125gJoe]

Maybe I missed it, but do you have fish in the tank?

Overfeeding can result in Blue Green algae....

[TwoTankAmin]

Swords need root ferts- get some Jobes Spikes (1st choice Fern & Palm, 2nd choice Houseplant), Push 1/2 spike under each sword all the way down to the bottom glass. get some AP root tabs w/iron and do the same. repeat this about every 3 months, more often if plants show decline.

BGA is not algae, it is a bacteria. you can hit it with a dose of EM or Maracyn and be sure to suck the dead stuff out of the tank.

[Ramirez]

I have about 20 fish in the tank. And to correct a statement in my first post, the tank has been planted for about 6 months.

Lately I have been feeding Bio-Blend food and less Tetra flakes. Maybe this food does not have enought phosphates?

[125gJoe]

Originally posted by TwoTankAmin
...BGA is not algae, it is a bacteria.... "BGA" stand for 'Blue Green Algae' -- a nickname for Cyanobacteria..


Here's a link for more...

Link: Cyanosite (http://www-cyanosite.bio.purdue.edu/)