What's wrong with these plants?

[cerdmw]

29 gallon tank, pH around 7.5, 0 ppm ammonia, tank has been running about 3 months. 1 female beta, 1 chinese algae eater, 6 1.5' channel cat, 3' pleco and 1 small danio. The channel been in about 3 weeks, the others been in 2-3 months. I somehow have about 10 small snails in there growing, I don't personally mind them so I've left them. Can see some on the plant pics. I feed TetraMin Tropical Flakes usually once in the morning and 1 Wardley algae disc a day as well.

I do weekly 50% water changes. My tap water I measured about 7.5 pH or higher. I been using Jungle's Start Right water conditioner and I dose (w/ the recommended dosage) of 0-0-3 TetraPlant's FloraPride fert as I do the water change.

I have no added CO2. About 3 weeks ago after alot of reading up on keeping plants, I realized my lighting was completely insufficient and I decided to replace the standard 20w florecents with much better bulbs, a ZooMed Ultra Sun to start. I got 1 of those, a Super Daylight and liked it but I couldn't find a 2nd one local so I got a different brand, a Power-Glo. So I have 1 ZooMed Ultra Sun Super Daylight and one Power-Glo, both 20w I believe (I think they are both 6700k bulbs). I keep the lights on about 12 hours a day. Water is around 78-80 degrees.

You can see my problem below if you look at the leaves. 2 java ferns, some other assorted plants. I'm new to live plants and don't remember what the others were when I bought them. The 1st picutured plant is in a pot, which I just repotted and put some flourite in the bottom. There is no other flourite in the tank at this time. It's looked like that for some time, I can see some new plant growth but it mostly comes in black. The java ferns I got off eBay from Mike and they came to me healthy. After 2 days in the tank they are already turning black as seen below.

I've not been able to get plants healthy in the tank yet, so it's not the newly introduced plants. Anyone know what is going on?

 

[WyldFya]

In the first picture, the plant on the right (out of focus) is not an aquatic plant. It will not do well completely submerged for very long. I would recommend getting a vase for it and just keeping the roots submerged in water. The power-glo bulb is 18,000K not even close to a decent bulb for aquatic plants. The other is 6500K. The black stuff is an algae, probably due to your high nitrates that I would be willing to bet you have. Thin out the number of cats you have in there, as they are going to release huge amounts of ammonia into your tank. This will quickly be converted to nitrates. The addition of some flourish excel wouldn't hurt, but isn't necessary.

 

[cerdmw]

I didn't mention my filtration. I have an Eclipse hood (or similar, not sure it's a real Eclipse) with a filter built in. Has a blue filter with a bio wheel, which I've recently read are no good for planted tanks as they disturb the water too much and agitate out the CO2? I'll be getting some canister filtration before long to replace the bio wheel. Really I want to build out a 55 gal I have really nice (cannister, CO2, a variety of plants, very good lighting, etc), but I need to get a handle on what's going on in this tank first. I *really* want to do a pond type setting (native North America tank - bluegill, cats, perch, etc) so I need to get a handle on the nitrate problem if I got one. The cats in there now are tiny, so if they are causing a problem I got to find a way around it so I don't run into it in the next tank.

So the black stuff on all my plants is algae? Likely because I have too much nitrate in the water? Would it be a good test if I pulled all the fish out of the tank for a week or so and see how it does? How do you test for Nitrates? Do I need to up my water changes to 2x a week? My ammonia levels were zero so I thought nitrates and nitrites would be ok since it's been fully cycled for several months w/ the bio wheel.

Here is a pic of the plant you mentioned, I just noticed today the one leaf went yellow. I got it at Pet Co (along with the potted one and the ones from the 3rd pic above), was pre-packaged in a box, it's been in there 3 months now. I don't recall it saying it wasn't fully aquatic but I didn't read up on it much and I didn't have a clue what I was doing when I first got them. Do you know what it, or the 1st pic above (the potted one) are called? Would like to read up on them.

 

[WyldFya]

For filtration, if you aren't injecting co2, a wet/dry is fine, but under high lighting, you will want co2, and no wet/dry. The nitrates are going to build no matter what as long as you have fish in a tank. The ammonia will read 0 because your filter is converting it into nitrites, which then in turn get turned into nitrates. Upping your waterchanges wouldn't necessarily help much. The plant in the picture is lucky bamboo. In general, don't buy plants from petco, as they are often not aquatic. The first picture is of a bolbitis species. In order to test for nitrates, get a nitrate test kit.

 

[WyldFya]

Forgot to mention, you really should read the stickies I posted at the top of the planted section. They will help you out quite a bit.

 

[cerdmw]

I have read the thread that you wrote although only once all the way through when I was first getting into plants. I need to go through it again as I'm sure it'll make much more sense now and I can pick up on more.

I'll replace that Glo bulb with another Super Daylight soon as I can find one. Thanks for setting me straight on that one, I had no idea bout that.

I got a test kit while out at lunch today, 1 for Nitrates and I picked up a Nitrite test just to be sure and have all the main test kits. As expected, Nitrites were zero but the Nitrate level was somewhere around 40ppm. I don't know what is considered high, I haven't found alot of info on the net as to what levels are ok and what isn't, but the one thing I did find indicated that this was pretty high. Regular water changes will help this out, and decreasing the bio-load from my reading (and common sense).

I have a Python 50' water change system coming soon in the mail so I'll find water changes much easier to perform. The ol bucket and gravel siphon was getting old, hopefully the python will work well and I can do 1-2 a week. I'll pull some fish out and put them in another tank for now and see if I can't get the nitrate levels down and get the black gone from the tank. I have some hard green algae growing on the tank walls, a pain to clean off (especially on acrylic!) so I'm guessing getting my nitrate levels under control will help with that alot.

Do the cats produce more bio load than the others? Would it because they are growing so much or just because cats do that?

Another thing I've wondered is what is a wet/dry filter? Is that the type of filter I have that I described above with the blue filter/bio wheel, or is it something else?

 

[WyldFya]

For you nitrates, aim for 10-15ppm. For the cats, yes they do produce a good amount of ammonia on there own. Add more fast growing stem plants to fight the nitrate levels. A bio-wheel is a type of wet/dry but not what is commonly referred to as a wet/dry filter.

 

[cerdmw]

I did a 50% WC last night and it helped lower a little but not much. I tested my tap water untreated and it was 20-40 ppm, which sucks. I was really hoping my tap water would be cleaner and I could just up the # of changes I did to get a handle on it. Is there a filter for the faucet I could get that would help clean out the nitrates or should I leave that up to the conditioner?

I tested some treated water (using Seacham's Prime water conditioner now) and it was about 5 ppm so that makes me hopeful. I wasn't able to get to any of the cats last night, is damn frustrating in a planted tank to get ahold of the bottom dwellers! I'll spend some more time on it tonight and get some out of there.

Would adding CO2 do anything to the nitrate levels? I don't understand how alot of people have ALOT of fish in their planted tank. Maybe their tanks are much more heavily planted than mine and their plants were established first, thus they are healthy and can handle the nitrate levels?

 

[cerdmw]

So since my last post I've done the following to try to control the nitrate levels and get the plants healthy.

1. Removed 4 of the 6 cats. My secondary tank isn't cycled and it's only 10 gal so I didn't want to put too many in there at once. I'm doing WC every other day until it's cycled. I'll probably pull out the other 2 cats soon and put them in there.

2. I pulled out a nearly dead plant (leaves were just strings) and repotted it in a plastic container and put it in window sill for now to try to bring it back to life (and keep the debris out of the tank). Have it in small plastic pot in flourite sitting in a tupperware container full of water, open top w/ some Flourish in with it. not much sunlight this time of year but it wasn't going anywhere but downhill in the fishtank.

3. I replaced the filter in the hood. Bio wheel is still the same but the filter had alot of dead plant leaf particles on it and the carbon was probably getting old so I replaced it (don't know how long they last, or if carbon would help or hurt).

4. I've done 1 more WC and I didn't disturb the gravel this time. Every time in the past I've done a gravel cleaning too since it's a lightly planted tank, but I've always kicked up a ton of debris into the water and I've read where this can cause algae growth spurts.

5. I've stopped adding the TerraPride fert and began using Flourish instead. I have some Flourish Trace and Flourish Excel ordered on it's way.

6. Removed about half the snails. Still have 5-7 in the tank, very small and more seem to pop up every day. I plan on pulling more out next WC this weekend.

Doesn't seem to have helped much, Nitrate is still in the 20-40 ppm range according to my kit and the black spots on the plant leaves doesn't appear to be receeding but it's only been a few days. Right now I'm planning on 'staying the course' with the above unless I get some more advice, I'm open to it!

I do also have a Hagen DIY CO2 kit coming, should have it in there by end of next week.

Any other thoughts? Do I just need to wait or are there more tests I need to look at (P, K, etc), other maintenance I need to do, etc.

One thing I didn't mention is that I have an underground filter. It's not ON, I never hooked it up to a powerhead or airstone after I read that they were no good for plants but it was already in the tank which was fully set up (so I never took it out). I do have the tubes connected and caps on the top (lost a clown loach cuz he went into the tube a couple of times) but nothing creating flow. Could this be causing problems under the substrate?

I have some time tomorrow, I could pull the whole thing apart, clean out the gravel and redo everything if that would get me on a good course?

 

[cerdmw]

Also I just realized I said FOOT (') when I meant INCH (").

I have 6 channel cat, all about an inch and a half, maybe 2 inches. I don't have any large fish in the aquarium. Course that was probably apparent, who has a 3 foot long Pleco...haha.