whats wrong with my plants :(

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kurty2osu

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Feb 1, 2008
7
0
0
Ohio
here's some pictures of some of my plants... the sides are turning black, they're curling up, the veins are black, there are some sort of stringy things coming off the leaves and there are holes on them (possibly from my yo-yo loaches though). They should be getting enough light and i give them LOTS of the Liquid fertilizer Flourish (the comprehensive kind). Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

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the hairs you see coming off your plants looks like bba which is a type of algae the other problems are nutrient deficiency you need to do more than just flourish for plants i dose dry ferts potassium nitrate mono potassium phosphate and then i use the micro nutrients on top of that (flourish) depending on the size of the tank depends on the dose
 
its a 60 Gallon tank... so would a gravel spike work for the other fertilization or should i buy something else?
 
the gravel spikes really only add iron and only really feed heavy root feeding plants it would help don't get me wrong but in an ideal planted aquarium you want to fertilize and have a good balance of light and co2 what are the plants you have in there i see the swords but what are the others what type of light do you have and what are your water parameters
 
for lighting i have a 20k bio somthing or another guy at the store said it was the best for that style of bulb and i have two 10 kk on a "current" brand light as for water parameters... i have no idea what that mean :screwy: i do know my pH is over 7.6 which i'm gonna work on soon i have to move back into school so i'm gonna buy the stuff for it then (will the liquid pH down stuff work or do i need to put more wood or something in there?) as for the plants the tall things in the back are going to be tossed here soon and replaced with some more interesting things once I get a decent tank started so just the swords will be staying
 
ok how many watts of light do you have over the tank just to help me a lil water parameters such as Ph ammonia nitrite nitrates if you want to lower your Ph do it with excel or make a diy co2 system for you tank cause both of them will help your plants and lower your Ph effectively at the same time with just swords you can get away with just the gravel spikes but when you get into other plants it is beneficial to dose ferts into the water column the reason why i said to use dry ferts is cost they are much cheaper then buying seachems products ada and so forth really what needs to happen is you need to decide what plants you want to go with high tech or low tech tank setup the bba (hairs on your plants) are a nightmare many planted tanks go through they are very hard to get rid of and your pleco wont touch it alive or dead but if you add excel to your tank if you overdose it its side effect is killing algae so that is a step but it will just grow back if you don't figure out what caused it and there is many things that affect this algae i hope my ramblings have helped you a little
 
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