My vals are dying!!

satanpie

Banana plant addict.
Aug 25, 2007
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Long Island NY
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I have a nice bunch of vals in my 75G that are dying!! they were doing great for a while and now suddenly they are losing color and wilting away, im having a nitrite problem, is this the cause you think? i have 96 watts of light, i know its low, but they were doing awesome for a while.

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I have the same problem with a stand of vals that seemed bullet proof. In my case I have 2.1 watts of lighting. All I can think of is it was weakened by Flourish Excell dosing that was discontinued a couple of months ago.
I don't see where nitrites woud kill them but maybe someone else will disagree.
 
ive never added anyhitng to my tank besides stress coat, prime, or aquarium salt. these vals were thriving for a while though, i recenlty added a bunch of red foxtail which has almost tripled its size in a month.
 
I had issues with my val when I first got it, but at that point I was a novice. I wasn't injecting CO2 and I wasn't adding ferts to the tank. I also have red foxtail in my tank right now, along with a bunch of other very fast growing plants (e.g., cabomba, wisteria, ludwigia) and I doubled the dose of ferts I have been putting in since adding those plants. It really is amazing how quickly foxtail grows. I think it grows about 6 inches in a week under my current tank conditions.

Are you using any gravel fertilizer like Flourish plant tabs? What kind of substrate? If I had to guess on something, I would guess that some nutrient is being sucked out of the water by the foxtail and there just isn't enough left for the val. It might even be CO2.

You might need to do some testing of the water parameters to see what might be lacking. My parents and siblings think I'm the mad scientist when I am doing water testing for my tanks, but I think it really is needed to grow healthy plants and fish.
 
yes, i thought that maybe the fox tail and the camboda were stealing nutrients from the water, i use eco complete as my substrate, i dont add any ferts or anyhitng though, i really think its the high nitrites that are the problem
 
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