First planted tank, plants dying :(

K

Kadaan

AC Members
Jul 26, 2009
10
0
0
Irvine, CA
I'm trying to set up my first planted tank, but have been pretty unsuccessful.

The tank:

  • 20g Long
  • Coralife Aqualight 30" 65W 10,000k lighting
  • 30lbs flourite substrate
The plants:

  • Ludwigia, Red (Ludwigia repens) - 1 bunch
  • Wisteria (Hygrophila difformis) - 1 bunch
  • Moss Ball (Aegagropila linnaei) - 1 ball
  • (not sure what the other plant is, hard to see in the photo behind the Ludwigia) - 1 bunch
All three plants were recommended as very easy to grow. I set up the tank without the plants and ran it with a HOB 20g filter for 1 week, then added the plants on Saturday afternoon. Sunday night, a lot of the leaves on the ludwigia started to fall off and float around the tank. This morning (Tuesday,) about half the wisteria leaves and the leaves on the other plant have fallen off and are floating as well. The moss ball still looks fine, other than some minor debris stuck to it which is normal. Some of the leaves are a darker green than there were originally, and many are just dying (turning slightly brown and transparent.)

I keep the light on from ~9am to ~9pm, is that too long? Am I supposed to be cycling the tank for plants? I've found lots of information on cycling to keep fish but nothing on plants. I'm eventually going to be putting in DiY CO2 injection, but didn't think that would make a difference this early on.

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First off, I would take the plants out of the pots and put the roots directly into your substrate. Get all the fabric off the roots, bunch the roots together, and push into your flourite. It also looks like your lights might not be hitting the ludwigia were it is placed in the tank. The tank doesn't need to be cycled, the extra nitrogen in the tank will be used by the plants, they don't mind it at all.

The plants you have listed are easy growers, and under the lights shouldn't have a problem. You will want CO2 with those lights though, as algae will likely be a problem in the near future.

Unfortunately, I am not sure why you are losing leaves, any fish in the tank?
 
Hmmm... those plants should grow for you pretty well. One thing you didn't mention and I can't really see in the picture is a heater sometimes if the water is too cold (unlikely in this weather) or too hot they might stress.

It is possible too that they were subject to some extreme in temp. before they got to your tank in which case they should bouce back and sprout new growth for you pretty soon.

As for the floating leaves if they are green don't panic I have seen my Wisteria root from a leaf and grow an entire new plant so now if one breaks off I let it float.
 
I removed them from the pots this morning and planted them behind the driftwood under the light. About half the leaves fell off while I moving them.

There are no fish in the tank right now, I was going to add some otos in a couple weeks.

I don't have a heater right now, and the temperature in my apartment has been peaking around 85 on really hot days and 78-80 on normal days. I don't have a thermometer set up on the tank, so I'm not sure how much the temp there changes. I'll pick one up asap to monitor that.
 
The plants are probably in shock. Just give them some time and they'll recover.
 
I had had pretty good luck with the fish I get but the plants are another story.

I'm waiting to see if the current set of 3 I got are going to take. My LFS guy gave me ones with roots and just told me to push them into the gravel. The last batch I got only had short roots.

Good bet listening to the guys & gals here as well as asking your local fish store person.
 
So after nearly dying off completely, they've slowly started to grow back. Here's some photo updates:

July 27
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July 29
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August 2nd
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August 10 (cycling finished, so I added some Oto's to eat the algae)
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