New Tank; plants fading...

[Trumper]

Ahoy.

New tank (Nano Cube-24 watts over 12 gal) about 10 days old. Eco-Complete substrate. I added some plants on day 3. All chemistry looked good then, looks good now:

PH: 7.6
Temp: 77
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite/Nitrate: 0
KH: 72ppm
GH: 161

The plants (various low light; wendtii, small sword, java fern, one micro sword ) looked fine for about 3 days, then slowly got kinda brownish in parts. The past 2 days I see small decayed spots that appear to be spreading.

Check the pic and you can see some of the brown (not algae) on the sword...and one of the decayed/faded/dying spots on the lily. The rest of the lily is doing fine; growing new leaves, etc. The micro sword is growing through the substrate and popping up new growth, but about 1/3 of it is yellowing and starting to decay.

I add Flouish about 2x a week as noted on the bottle. I've only added water once to top off--yeah, I use de-clor/stress coat. I have a little 10g air pump running a couple of stones in the back corner; on during the day, off at night. Lights are on 10 hours a day.

There are 3 Ghost Shrimp moving around in there (had 4, one disappeared).

I checked tonight and temp/ph, etc were fine. Ammonia 0, Nitrite/Nitrate *very* slightly off zero...not by much.

So what's keeping the plants from being healthy?

Did the eco-complete help with the cycle? I think it was supposed to, but I thought I'd watch it for a few weeks before slowly adding fish. This plant thing has me concerned....

Thanks.

 

[trigoudarammi]

Do u not have a c02 plant feeder those are essential you could make one with a bottle, sugar and some yeast.

 

[kveeti]

Nitrite/Nitrate: 0

Nitrite/Nitrate *very* slightly off zero...not by much.

The lumping of nitrIte and nitrAte together both times interests me. These are 2 separate tests. NitrIte should be 0 in a cycled tank. And you should be showing some nitrAtes. If the plants are eating up all your nitrAtes, a lot of people with planted tanks add KN03 (potassium nitrAte). That could be something that is missing for your plants.

Edit. And I wouldn't bother with CO2 injection on such a small tank. Buy some Flourish Excel instead and add that to your fertilizer regiment. (Also I wouldn’t say extra C02 is essential in a lower light tank, but it can’t hurt.)