All plants melting help! Did dirting 3 months ago, responsible??

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LiveMermaid07

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Jul 7, 2009
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About 3 months ago I switched the substrate in my 29g for soil capped with pfs.
All the parameters have stayed the same as previously.


All of my plants are now melting!



I thought that soil was suppose to be good for the plants??




I did stick some fert capsules in the soil , maybe a few weeks after setting up.

pH about 7, hardness (if dipstick is to be trusted) is around 150, alkalinity - the color on the stick never matches what the bottle says so no idea
Nitrates - less than 20
Nitrites - 0
Ammonia - as far as I know 0
Aquaclear 50 and 70, + a medium sponge filter
temp usually 76-80
light, 2 T-5's 18watt + 1 T-8 15watt


After the plants had started melting, overnight (fairly recently) a bunch of woodchips popped up through the sand. Don't know / think that could have anything to do with it, but thought I'd mention just in case.

Most of the plants are not crypts btw.

Why would the plants just suddenly start melting like this??
Help please!

Thank you.
 
I had this happen recently but it was with new plants that had been posted to me. Maybe your water has had more chemicals added to it? Once my water was treated with chlorine and it made all my plants droop a bit..... Living in
A block of flats means they usually overdose the water to hell!!!!
 
I add dechlorinator, but I suppose the water company could be pumping some other trash in there... O.O
 
oh yeah, the roots are rotting too, but when I pulled up one of the dead amazon swords it did not smell sulphur-y.

when I 'stab' the substrate with my stirring dowel in some places, but not all, the air bubbles that come up smell sulphur-y, but only some of them not all. I think most of them are just air (though I don't know why..?)
 
Too little information to give more than an opinion. Soil is too wide a phrase to use in diagnostics.
Specific types of plants may help. Crypts are commonly know to melt. So can several others. Some recover, some won't..

That you have some gas pockets that smell like rotten eggs, means some of the gas pockets are anerobic areas.
Three months is about the rot time for wood organics in an aquatic environment.
Generally speaking, adding root tabs or capsules isn't needed on a dirt substrate for a year or so.
If your intention was Walstad method, reading the entire book, before plunging in, is a good idea.
If you were doing mineralized soil, there shouldn't be wood chips in the mix.
If you were doing capped topsoil, the actual soil can vary from foot to foot in the garden and dramatically from across the country.
 
Miracle grow organic potting mix (I think this is the name, the one in the 'shrimp bowl' pdf).

I thought I'd gotten out all the wood chips, but these are all under 1/4".

Other than crypts (which I do know tend to melt), I have /had, amazon swords, apogeton, dwarf lily, anubias (these are almost doing ok but not quite), dwarf sag,
java fern (dead), hairgrass (dead), watersprite (almost all dead), bacopa (dead), telanthera (dead)

After pulling up all the remaining amazons I found that 3 of them had actually grown some more roots than when planted, but everything else was rotting.
 
miracle grow organic choice potting mix, sorry
 
I have a hard time believing it would be JUST the soil...I'm using the same stuff and not having any melting problems with my plants.

Have you been dosing the water column at all? Might be still nutrient deprived.
 
Once every week or 2 I add 2 - 3.5 ml of flourish.

I figured the floating plants and anubias and such would still need it.
 
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