Hi, I'm still relatively new to planted aquariums.
I have what I am sure is not an ideal setup for a planted tank. 10 gallon aquarium, with a 15 watt tube-type fluorescent light in the hood, probably only around 5000K I'm guessing but I can check when I get home (looks a little warm for my taste), and the substrate is plain pea-sized aquarium gravel, brownish and coated with epoxy. The substrate thickness is probably close to 2 inches. I had no idea what I was doing when I set all this up initially, or I probably would have tried to set up a more naturally-nutritive substrate, like some of the really nice planted aquariums I have seem have.
My photo period is 10 hours a day, consisting of 5 hours on, 3 hours off, then 5 hours on. Water pH stays around 7.8 lately, and I have somewhat hard water. I have not tested the hardness yet or tested for iron, as I only have the API "master test" kit. I can get additional testing equipment if necessary to figure this out. I do a water change about once a week, though I just had ankle surgery and went about 2 weeks between changes. I treat the new tap water with Prime before adding it. I also dose salt at 1 teaspoon per gallon added at water change. I salt only the amount of water I add in the water change, so if I change out 5 gallons, I dose with 5 teaspoons. Water temperature ranges between about 80 at night, and gets up to maybe 84 during the hottest part of the day.
The tank is currently populated with 3 guppies, 1 molly, 10 small red ramshorn snails, and 10 red cherry shrimp. There also are a couple of damselfly nymphs that somehow got in there, a few pond snails, and I think some tiny cyclops or daphnia or some kind of bug which I can't identify living on the plant leaves, spotted on the Anubias. They are so small i can barely see them but once I find one I can see it moving around on the surface of the leaf, pretty fast.
I used to have brownish and black fuzzy looking algae (maybe some blackbeard too) coating all of my plants making them look sick and dirty, but after I got the snails and shrimp, set up my photo period using a digital timer, and started using fertilizers, the algae seemed to slowly disappear until now there is not much left at all. What is left seems to diminish daily.
I have a small sword in there, a java fern, a small anubias, and 2 "betta bulb" plants of unknown species (unknown to me anyway) that sprouted recently and are growing quickly. All of the above plants seem to take root and stay in the substrate just fine and even are growing and adding leaves.
However, I have had less luck with stemmed plants, namely anacharis, milwort, and one other whose name I forgot that has tiny pink-tinged leaves.
I plant stemmed plants by carefully holding them in my long-handled aquarium planting tweezers/tongs (sold for this purpose) and then pushing them into the substrate maybe an inch or so. When I withdraw the tweezers, the stem is left embedded in the gravel.
Anyway, about the plants. The 3rd one, with the pink leaves, was a disaster. Every single stem I planted ended up rotting off at the level of the substrate and breaking off, floating to the surface and leaving just the rotted black end left in the gravel.
The second worst was the milwort. Most of them turned a darker and darker shade of green until they looked almost purplish, and rotted off at the level of the substrate. However, before that happened, they sent down tiny white thread-like roots from several segments along the length of the stem. However, these roots didn't grab hold of the substrate very well. Once they reach the substrate, most of the roots seem to stop there, as if they don't like the substrate. A couple worked their way in, so the result is, most of these stems are sort of floating, held in place by just a few strands of roots. Oddly enough, there are a few exceptions - A few of the stems are bright green, and thriving, and stay happily where they are in the substrate. I don't know what causes some to do better than others. The bright green, thriving ones seem to all be along the back wall of the aquarium, and moving towards the front, they get darker green and more prone to floating, or resting on the bottom, or being suspended by a few thin roots. Also, segments often break off the darker green plants, and end up floating around the tank and usually get stuck in the filter inlet and have to be removed.
On to the anacharis. Almost all of the anacharis stems also sent down little white roots from various segments along the lower part of the stem. All of the stems look healthy, but about half of them have rotted and broken off at the substrate level. Most of them stay put though because they are either tethered by the roots they sent down, or they are sort of "caught" among the neighboring stems of anacharis that didn't rot off.
Now, I did try to make the gravel more appealing to the plants. I inserted Seachem root tabs even spaced around the gravel, following the package recommendations for quantity (I think 7 or 8 total). Additionally, I mixed some Osmocote into the upper inch or so of the substrate. I also recently started dosing with Seachem Flourish using the EI method. None of the above methods seem to be encouraging the plants to stay in the substrate.
Is the epoxy-coated pea-sized (maybe a bit smaller) gravel just a bad medium for plants to take root in? Should I think about a complete revamp of the aquarium, with a different substrate?
Another thing I wondered is if being low on iron could cause these kind of problems. I seem to have lots of issues with plants "melting", if I'm using the right term. What happens sometimes to my java fern leaves, or anacharis leaves, and even some of the "betta bulb" plant leaves, is they look good one day, then the next day they start to turn more transparent, like they are wilted, and eventually the transparent-looking part rots away or sloughs off. Also, my anubias generally looks really good, but 2 of the leaves suddenly turned yellow overnight, and one of them actually turned half yellow and half brown (crusty looking brown), while the other just turned yellow at the tip. The rest of the anubias leaves are still nice bright green.
Any ideas? Could my melting and substrate-rotting issues be connected? Or is this a bad substrate material?
I would be open to switching to a completely different substrate material in the future, if it would make the plants happy to take root. What I really would like in the foreground would be some kind of low plant that takes root and spreads around like a ground cover. The couple types of small-leaved plants I have tried never would get established or take root into the substrate. What is the best substrate setup for encouraging good plant roots and spreading ground cover?
Also, could the problems have anything to do with not having enough light? Should I try to increase the light to 2 or 3 watts per gallon? Right now I guess I'm at 1.5 watts per gallon with the current setup. I do not dose CO2.
Thanks for any advice you can give!
I have what I am sure is not an ideal setup for a planted tank. 10 gallon aquarium, with a 15 watt tube-type fluorescent light in the hood, probably only around 5000K I'm guessing but I can check when I get home (looks a little warm for my taste), and the substrate is plain pea-sized aquarium gravel, brownish and coated with epoxy. The substrate thickness is probably close to 2 inches. I had no idea what I was doing when I set all this up initially, or I probably would have tried to set up a more naturally-nutritive substrate, like some of the really nice planted aquariums I have seem have.
My photo period is 10 hours a day, consisting of 5 hours on, 3 hours off, then 5 hours on. Water pH stays around 7.8 lately, and I have somewhat hard water. I have not tested the hardness yet or tested for iron, as I only have the API "master test" kit. I can get additional testing equipment if necessary to figure this out. I do a water change about once a week, though I just had ankle surgery and went about 2 weeks between changes. I treat the new tap water with Prime before adding it. I also dose salt at 1 teaspoon per gallon added at water change. I salt only the amount of water I add in the water change, so if I change out 5 gallons, I dose with 5 teaspoons. Water temperature ranges between about 80 at night, and gets up to maybe 84 during the hottest part of the day.
The tank is currently populated with 3 guppies, 1 molly, 10 small red ramshorn snails, and 10 red cherry shrimp. There also are a couple of damselfly nymphs that somehow got in there, a few pond snails, and I think some tiny cyclops or daphnia or some kind of bug which I can't identify living on the plant leaves, spotted on the Anubias. They are so small i can barely see them but once I find one I can see it moving around on the surface of the leaf, pretty fast.
I used to have brownish and black fuzzy looking algae (maybe some blackbeard too) coating all of my plants making them look sick and dirty, but after I got the snails and shrimp, set up my photo period using a digital timer, and started using fertilizers, the algae seemed to slowly disappear until now there is not much left at all. What is left seems to diminish daily.
I have a small sword in there, a java fern, a small anubias, and 2 "betta bulb" plants of unknown species (unknown to me anyway) that sprouted recently and are growing quickly. All of the above plants seem to take root and stay in the substrate just fine and even are growing and adding leaves.
However, I have had less luck with stemmed plants, namely anacharis, milwort, and one other whose name I forgot that has tiny pink-tinged leaves.
I plant stemmed plants by carefully holding them in my long-handled aquarium planting tweezers/tongs (sold for this purpose) and then pushing them into the substrate maybe an inch or so. When I withdraw the tweezers, the stem is left embedded in the gravel.
Anyway, about the plants. The 3rd one, with the pink leaves, was a disaster. Every single stem I planted ended up rotting off at the level of the substrate and breaking off, floating to the surface and leaving just the rotted black end left in the gravel.
The second worst was the milwort. Most of them turned a darker and darker shade of green until they looked almost purplish, and rotted off at the level of the substrate. However, before that happened, they sent down tiny white thread-like roots from several segments along the length of the stem. However, these roots didn't grab hold of the substrate very well. Once they reach the substrate, most of the roots seem to stop there, as if they don't like the substrate. A couple worked their way in, so the result is, most of these stems are sort of floating, held in place by just a few strands of roots. Oddly enough, there are a few exceptions - A few of the stems are bright green, and thriving, and stay happily where they are in the substrate. I don't know what causes some to do better than others. The bright green, thriving ones seem to all be along the back wall of the aquarium, and moving towards the front, they get darker green and more prone to floating, or resting on the bottom, or being suspended by a few thin roots. Also, segments often break off the darker green plants, and end up floating around the tank and usually get stuck in the filter inlet and have to be removed.
On to the anacharis. Almost all of the anacharis stems also sent down little white roots from various segments along the lower part of the stem. All of the stems look healthy, but about half of them have rotted and broken off at the substrate level. Most of them stay put though because they are either tethered by the roots they sent down, or they are sort of "caught" among the neighboring stems of anacharis that didn't rot off.
Now, I did try to make the gravel more appealing to the plants. I inserted Seachem root tabs even spaced around the gravel, following the package recommendations for quantity (I think 7 or 8 total). Additionally, I mixed some Osmocote into the upper inch or so of the substrate. I also recently started dosing with Seachem Flourish using the EI method. None of the above methods seem to be encouraging the plants to stay in the substrate.
Is the epoxy-coated pea-sized (maybe a bit smaller) gravel just a bad medium for plants to take root in? Should I think about a complete revamp of the aquarium, with a different substrate?
Another thing I wondered is if being low on iron could cause these kind of problems. I seem to have lots of issues with plants "melting", if I'm using the right term. What happens sometimes to my java fern leaves, or anacharis leaves, and even some of the "betta bulb" plant leaves, is they look good one day, then the next day they start to turn more transparent, like they are wilted, and eventually the transparent-looking part rots away or sloughs off. Also, my anubias generally looks really good, but 2 of the leaves suddenly turned yellow overnight, and one of them actually turned half yellow and half brown (crusty looking brown), while the other just turned yellow at the tip. The rest of the anubias leaves are still nice bright green.
Any ideas? Could my melting and substrate-rotting issues be connected? Or is this a bad substrate material?
I would be open to switching to a completely different substrate material in the future, if it would make the plants happy to take root. What I really would like in the foreground would be some kind of low plant that takes root and spreads around like a ground cover. The couple types of small-leaved plants I have tried never would get established or take root into the substrate. What is the best substrate setup for encouraging good plant roots and spreading ground cover?
Also, could the problems have anything to do with not having enough light? Should I try to increase the light to 2 or 3 watts per gallon? Right now I guess I'm at 1.5 watts per gallon with the current setup. I do not dose CO2.
Thanks for any advice you can give!
