# Planted tank question



## Athrian (Jan 4, 2012)

Hi,

First off I'm new here so hello to everyone.

I have a 29 gallon freshwater planted aquarium with water wisteria, a few sword plant, one java fern, one bamboo plants, and a few banana plants. (The bamboo is probably being removed soon, it was a placeholder from when I started). I've had my tank since May of last year with the usual newbie mistakes for the first few months, though I finally have my plants doing mostly well.

I have 2 questions that I'm hoping I might be able to get some help with:

1) There is some black algae growing on some of my plants' leaves (specifically, the water wisteria leaves closer to the bottom of the tank, and the bamboo plant). It is not hair algae, but just almost what looks like a little bit of black sludge:










Pic 2 (It won't let me post more than one inline pic so the rest are posted as links):
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/3/imag0163t.jpg

Is this normal or is there anything I can do to get rid of it. I've tried the API algaefix drops without much luck.

2) The leaves on my sword plants are regularly getting some brown spots and thinning around the edges. My tank has substrate and I've tried using API root tabs, and a liquid plant food additive once per week. The stems appear healthy, but the leaves don't stay very green and the plant doesn't seem to grow, even if I trim them. Any ideas what I need to try?

Pic 1:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/842/imag0160m.jpg

Pic 2:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/11/imag0162uq.jpg

Info about my tank:

29 gallon
81 degrees
pH 6.6
2 CO2 cannisters connected to a powerhead to disperse the bubbles and regularly change the contents every 3-4 weeks.
Ammonia, nitrates, nitrites are all good
About 2.5" of substrate in the tank

Lighting: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002DIRBY/ref=oh_o02_s00_i00_details
Lighting Bulbs: 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003C5PQWW/ref=oh_o03_s00_i00_details
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003C5RTOA/ref=oh_o03_s00_i01_details

Edit: The supplement that I add to the water is Seacham Flourish, half a capful once per week

Thanks for any help or tips anyone can provide!


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

You might try asking on this forum. 
http://www.azaquaticplants.com/
There are a lot of very good planted tank people there and the club was started by the woman who writes the planted tank column in Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine.


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## grogan (Jan 23, 2011)

Woah! There are planted tank people here too! Give us a chance to answer.

Question One:
If its only on lower levels of your aquarium the problem could be nutrient dead zones. Planted tanks often have high currents to evenly distribute nutrients and co2. What kind of filters/power heads do you have? Also rather than dosing once a week I would do it every day. Maybe not the entire amount but adding it daily makes sure that there are enough nutrients to go around. For example I use the same product on my 56g and do 5mml every day. 

Question #2:
Hmm they are looking rough. Trim the dead leafs and keep up with the root tabs and co2. My swords took forever to take off and I had issues like this too. Eventually they will start to grow and it will be fast. Maybe Mikaila will have some input on this one. 

And honestly from this pic it looks like the start of black beard algae on the wisteria...if thats the case your in for some fun. 


Oh and DROP THAT TEMP. 78 is what you want. Plants and heat...not so much.


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## Athrian (Jan 4, 2012)

grogan said:


> Woah! There are planted tank people here too! Give us a chance to answer.
> 
> Question One:
> If its only on lower levels of your aquarium the problem could be nutrient dead zones. Planted tanks often have high currents to evenly distribute nutrients and co2. What kind of filters/power heads do you have? Also rather than dosing once a week I would do it every day. Maybe not the entire amount but adding it daily makes sure that there are enough nutrients to go around. For example I use the same product on my 56g and do 5mml every day.


I have 2 air stones in the tank, one in the back left and one on the right side. I also have an AquaClear 50 powerhead, which puts a real strong current on the right side of the tank and disperses the CO2. Image included for reference:










The only problem with dosing every day is even when I put nutrients in twice a week, I got a lot of green algae blooms. The nutrient stuff is pretty concentrated. Or should I just do a few drops every day rather than once per capful once a week?

Also I just thought, I've seen some mentions about carbon in the filters maybe soaking stuff up. Should I just run my filter without carbon? I had always heard that was bad though.



grogan said:


> Question #2:
> Hmm they are looking rough. Trim the dead leafs and keep up with the root tabs and co2. My swords took forever to take off and I had issues like this too. Eventually they will start to grow and it will be fast. Maybe Mikaila will have some input on this one.
> 
> And honestly from this pic it looks like the start of black beard algae on the wisteria...if thats the case your in for some fun.
> ...


Before I got the current lighting I had crazy problems with black beard algae (and rotting stems since apparently the light wasn't strong enough). Do the various anti-algae solutions work for black beard algae, or just green/brown algae?

Would 79 or 80 work for temperature? From looking around, I thought swords were good up until 82. I have 2 Electric Blue Rams in the tank that require 79, so I don't want to drop it below what they can take since they're so sensitive.


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## guppygirl2000 (Jan 6, 2012)

Athrian,
I love your yellow guppy there, so pretty!


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

grogan said:


> Woah! There are planted tank people here too! Give us a chance to answer.


No insult intended. It's good to get more than one opinion. I'm interested to see what people here say also.


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## grogan (Jan 23, 2011)

Air stones! ohhh nooooo...

There are a few things about your co2 setup Im going to explain to you real quick. First off, running your co2 tubing into your power head is not the most effective way to distribute it into the tank. Try to find yourself and actual co2 diffuser. From what I can see from this pic those are some big co2 bubbles and they are going strait to the top of the tank. When they hit the surface and pop the co2 escapes your tank and is wasted. Get yourself a nice diffuser, put it at the bottom of the tank, directly under your power head. The bubbles will be tiny and when they hit the intake of your power head they will be distributed even more.

Now about the air stones:
Yes they generate water movement but they are also making a bunch of surface agitation. More surface agitation is bad for your co2 setup. It makes it easy for the co2 bubbles to escape your tank. I would remove them and get another power head, possibly a directional one. 

Dosing:
Yeah drops will work just as good. 

Carbon:
I dont use it because I have always heard that it can mess with the co2. Plus its expensive, needs to be replaced often and doesn't serve any purposes that I actually need. 

Black beard Algae:
No chemicals can cure this stuff. The siamensis (siamese algae eater) is the only fish that will eat the stuff. The best way to cure this algae is finding the equilibrium between co2, light, and nutrients. Its caused by an imbalance of the three. You have all the stuff to solve the problem its just going to take some tinkering. 

Temp:
Well I did a little experiment at work the other day with some of the shop swords. I put three different swords into a 84 degree tank. Amazon, mellon, and a flame sword. By the end of the day 2 were showing similar symptoms. However the flame sword held strong. I did some research and as it turns out they can tolerate the higher temps. maybe try switching them out with some flame swords.


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## Athrian (Jan 4, 2012)

grogan said:


> Air stones! ohhh nooooo...
> 
> There are a few things about your co2 setup Im going to explain to you real quick. First off, running your co2 tubing into your power head is not the most effective way to distribute it into the tank. Try to find yourself and actual co2 diffuser. From what I can see from this pic those are some big co2 bubbles and they are going strait to the top of the tank. When they hit the surface and pop the co2 escapes your tank and is wasted. Get yourself a nice diffuser, put it at the bottom of the tank, directly under your power head. The bubbles will be tiny and when they hit the intake of your power head they will be distributed even more.


I think the picture may be confusing. The CO2 tubes are running directly into the powerhead intake. On the right-hand side of the tank, the black cone pointing down is the intake (I added the extra plastic tube from the aqua clear filter in it to prevent fish getting sucked up into it), and I cut holes in either side to feed the CO2 tubes into it. The CO2 is getting diffused by the powerhead (and I've definitely noticed a difference from other diffusing solutions I've tried). All the bubbles in the picture are from either the air stones or the power head (and the ones from the powerhead are present whether the CO2 is fed into the intake or not).



grogan said:


> Carbon:
> I dont use it because I have always heard that it can mess with the co2. Plus its expensive, needs to be replaced often and doesn't serve any purposes that I actually need.
> 
> Black beard Algae:
> No chemicals can cure this stuff. The siamensis (siamese algae eater) is the only fish that will eat the stuff. The best way to cure this algae is finding the equilibrium between co2, light, and nutrients. Its caused by an imbalance of the three. You have all the stuff to solve the problem its just going to take some tinkering.


I'm going to try without carbon for a week and see how it goes. I've always taken it out when dosing with any medication, but not when I add any plant food in, so maybe that's causing problems.

I trimmed all the wisteria today when I did a water change and got most all the leaves that had the black algae on it. If no chemicals work, I'll stop dosing with the algae-fix solution then, I assumed it would help with this type as well.

Thanks for the tips, hopefully some of these will help with my sword plants without stressing my fish.


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