Semi-Newbie having problems growing plants

not sure how much of the ferts you're dosing, but here's my 2 cents:

1. you need a little nitrate in your tank for the plants to eat. nitrogen is one of your macros, and while you're not fertilizing any of them in any large amount, having a nitrate of 0 isn't helkping the plants.

2. iron dosing. you may be overdosing iron into the tank, and I've personally found that just doing a dose of flourish is plenty without needing the flourish iron (it's super easy to overdose iron IME). put another way, you're probably only needing somewhere in the vicinity of .5ppm of iron, and realistically you shouldnt' need to dose very much at all to get the difference between just dosing flourish and what your iron requirements are.

3. you may have plants that need more light than 2.2 wpg. I have a tank that has 3wpg which some peopel have considered the high side of medium, borderline high, so 2.2 wpg is probably the low side of medium lighting.

so I think what I would do is let your nitrates build up to about 10ppm and see how they do from there. also head over to aquaticplantcentral.com and check out their plant profiles to see what kind of light your plants need and the "fertilator" to calculate how much dosing of iron you need for healthy fertilization.

Anacharis hate excel. It takes a long time to acclimate to the stuff. They typically turn brown and sometimes melt. Dose the stuff away from those plants and let it dilute evenly.

Also you should have NO3 higher than zero. You plants need it. Your NO3 should be around 10-20ppm and your PO4 around 1-2

If you really want your plants to grow well, you will need a CO2 system. Unfortunate, but true.
pH is not an issue; however, if you had presurrized CO2 it would be lower.

personally I don't think it should be a problem. maybe someone else has a more intimate knowledge of how plants intereact with ph and hardness than I do, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say I don't think so.

I do know that some plantts prefer harder water as they can get some of the nutrients they need from the bicarbonates (the dissolved stuff that makes it hard water) in the water, and I think anacharis is one of those plants. the others though, I dont' know.

the key thing to remember is when you see a plant problem it is most often a case of nutrient imbalance. the big ones to remember (in my opinion) are carbon, nitrogen and light. other heavy hitters are phosphorous and potassium, and below those are your irons and magnesiums etc. typically when you see plants having problems it means an imbalance of some of these nutrients. the most common ones I've seen are nitrogen, carbon, light and iron imbalances. a lot of times in addition to plant problems you may also see algae outbreaks if it's a nutrient imbalance.

I know ther eare folks here who know a lot more about this stuff than I do, so I'll let them get into the details (and correct any of my mistakes ). hopefully I have provided the "in a nutshell" explanation of possible solutions.

fresh_newby said:

Anacharis hate excel.

Click to expand...

I forgot about that! good catch fresh

...............................*wink*

0 nitrate == bad!

Dont let it go below 5 or your plants will starve!

if you're below a certain amount of wpg you typically don't need to dose carbon (CO2 or excel), but I can't remember what wpg that is. I think someone else can tell us however, CO2 will help growth at any light level (I saw good results with it in a tank with only 0.75 wpg); it's just not mandatory as it is in higher light tanks.

for nitrogen and phosphate levels, I would stick with your weekly water changes, and if you need to dose nitrogen I use flourish nitrogen, although there are other cheaper DIY alternatives if you look in the fertilizer sticky. if you're on municipal water, call your water utility and ask how much phosphate is in the water, and if it's around 1-2ppm you don't need to dose it. if it's lower, you can use flourish phosphate, although there are DIY methods for this in the fert sticky as well.

a big algae outbreak is a good sign that one of your nutrients is out of balance. if your nutrients are balanced algae will usually be under control because the plants will use up the nutrients faster than the algae. if one is short though, you'll start seeing algae creep in.

as far as which deficiencies, sometimes your algae will tell you, and there is a good algae article over at plantgeek.com that can explain that. there are other signs of specific deficiencies, a webpage of which I used to have a bookmark to, but I don't have it on this computer. maybe someone else will have a good one