plants growing poorly or dying - need help

[snowman1235]

Hi, new member with a first post here. ...I've been spending much time reading the articles on planted aquaria on the Aquariacentral, but would still appreciate your thoughts on what I'm not doing right to get my plants growing as they should...

I've been cycling a "new" set-up of a 400L (100gal) Jewel Rio 400 aquarium, preparing it for planted Discus aquarium... It's been cycling now for 2 months, but the plants don't seem to be happy; only anubias is growing nicely, echinodorus has transparent brown leaves, camboba is rotting away and dying and valisnerias are just not going anywhere but shrinking and withering.

Here's the situation:

Substrate: Prodac (peat plates) and about 5-7cm of 5mm-1cm granite pebbles (no limestone)
Lights: new Philips Aqua Sky in Aqua Relle (2x36w; 120cm) (before replacement I had standard Juwel lights that come with Rio 400 system)
CO2 system: Ferplast CO2 Energy Professional tank, pump 250l/h (should suffice 500L tanks); set for 1,5 bubbles/s
Filters: internal 1000L/h and external for another 1000L/h

Parameters (stable!): NO2=0,0; NH4=0,0; kH=4; gH=5; pH=7,5 (too basic? should I be adding acidifiers?)
Plants: anubias (nana and another one - bigger, don't know the name), valisnerias, echinodoruses (2 kinds; smaller and bigger ones), cambobas, several cryptocorinas.

So, the aquarium has been cycling for approx. 2 months; parameters stable, but plant growth poor or plants dying (except for anubias). I'm not adding any fertilisers, for I assumed fresh substrate should do the job initially.
Any suggestions what may be wrong? Too little light (even though Rio400 set-up is made for 2 bulbs)? Not enough CO2? Should I start adding fertilisers?
Below are pictures of some of the described "symptoms".
Any suggestion / help would be much appreciated!

 

[Bk718]

Light is the limiting factor here. It being a 100g tank and the light being only .72wpg, no wonder the plants are dying. Try and up your lighting to atleast 1.5wpg (minimum) if you want to see the plants thrive. You have a great co2 setup and its a shame for it to go to waste with the extremely low lighting


BTW welcome to AC!!

 

[DrNo]

I have no doubt that others more qualified than I will weigh in, but a few things come immediately to mind:

1) Your lighting is underpowered considering the size of your tank; especially for one that is being CO2 injected. You're less than 1 watt/gallon in the current set-up and this could indeed be growth-limiting for your set-up. What is the K value on your lamps? They should be in the 6,500-10,000 K range.

2) Can we get a nitrate reading please? "NPK" fertilization is the core supplementation for plants and I'm curious what your nitrate readings are without any fertilization.

3) Have you been able to actually estimate the CO2 concentration in your tank? You can use a formula that takes into account the KH of the tank but a far more reliable measure is a drop checker with 4dKH solution in it to target a CO2 concentration of 30 ppm. This appears to be optimal for plant growth, and tends to suppress algae if light and fert is not growth-limiting.

4) As an aside, I'm curious if you have been fighting algae in your tank.

Welcome to the forum!

 

[efors]

Hi!
I agree with BK and DrVader about the light. I would prefer 2wpg ( a total of 200w for your tank) and lamps with a K value of 6500 K. I would also use root tabs in the substrate; my favorites are Flourish tabs.
Welcome and good luck!

 

[derekp]

Light is your problem. I honestly stopped reading your post after I saw how little light you had. Like Bk said, try to get it around 1.5 or 2 wpg. 3 wpg if you want to grow the really nice plants.

 

[247Plants]

Yep as the others have said. Light is your limiting factor.

Everything else looks perfect. Do you dose ferts?

 

[snowman1235]

Hi,
Thank you for quick responses. It seems there is a consensus about low light. I was guessing this might be the case when reading posts about suitable/ideal set-up of planted aquaria, although the aquarium seems quite bright to me and I wonder how the shy discus fish will like so much light... I find it so strange, though, that Jewel would make their largest serial aquarium (Rio400) with default set-up of two 120cm light bulbs in the hood. I figured they must know what they're doing, but I guess not??
(http://www.juwel-aquarium.de/en/rio.htm?cat=8)

Anyway, I'll definitely have a look at how can I add 2 more light bulbs somehow...

And I'll start adding some fertilizers. So far the source of nitrates were a small school of red neons which I feed 3x daily... probably also not enough. I presently don't have other fish, as I was waiting for the tank to get ready before I move in discus and housekeeping fish (corys, siamese foxes etc.).

 

[snowman1235]

OK, I found an interesting solution... Juwel (the maker of my Rio 400 aquarium) now has a T5 lighting system that allows for 2x54W T5 ligts. If I add to that a very good reflector to bounce the remaining light back to the aquarium such as this Pro line, which supposedly increase the yield by 200-300%, this might even suffice?
What do you think?

 

[Pirateshake]

I wouldnt do Siamese algae eaters or flying fox's ( look the same but are not ) in my experience both tend to get agressive and attack fish alot. Discus's as i have read need peaceful fish to be with.

 

[Bk718]

Hi,
Thank you for quick responses. It seems there is a consensus about low light. I was guessing this might be the case when reading posts about suitable/ideal set-up of planted aquaria, although the aquarium seems quite bright to me and I wonder how the shy discus fish will like so much light... I find it so strange, though, that Jewel would make their largest serial aquarium (Rio400) with default set-up of two 120cm light bulbs in the hood. I figured they must know what they're doing, but I guess not??
(http://www.juwel-aquarium.de/en/rio.htm?cat=8)

Anyway, I'll definitely have a look at how can I add 2 more light bulbs somehow...

And I'll start adding some fertilizers. So far the source of nitrates were a small school of red neons which I feed 3x daily... probably also not enough. I presently don't have other fish, as I was waiting for the tank to get ready before I move in discus and housekeeping fish (corys, siamese foxes etc.).

Stock lighting is not meant for planted tanks, its there just to provide simple light to illuminate the tank.
I would first try and fix the lighting then work on the ferts, since if the plants dont have that first and most important factor (light) included in their "diet" they wont be able to consume all the required ferts.