# Plant problems, substrate the culprit?



## talontsiawd (Oct 19, 2008)

I had great success with my Florite Red, mixed with some Flourite Black and some regular aquarium gravel. I never had a single issues with anything, plants grew great, etc, until one day, everything just crashed. Here is a before and after picture"
Before 








After










Basically, my tank crashed and all my plants started to pull up from the substrate. They would get a little black area and then disconnect. I got frustrated and tried rinsing the substrate. I started over and it has been better but it still happens. Nothing else changed over the course of those pictures. I have now changed some variables but nothing has stopped this from happening. I use to have a few small places where it happened, now it can be anywhere. The same plants that had no trouble growing have issues now. 

The only reason I blame the substrate is that no matter what changes I make, the same thing keeps happening. I have reduced light, increased light, changed my fert dosing, etc. All the plants still grow really well once they unroot, it isn't like they are dying, they just unroot. 

Any explanation of what I did wrong. I want to redo this tank and don't want spend a bunch of money on substrate if it is something else, or more importantly, if I am doing something wrong.


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## doubleott05 (Mar 16, 2010)

hmmm i have had this happen before in my tank but not all the species at once.... 

we need to know what your tank schedule is.

how often do you vaccume/ water change
ferts
lights
co2 
water hardness 

everything so we can help

thanks
elliot


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## talontsiawd (Oct 19, 2008)

I would never vacuum because the plants I had would get pulled up. I would do a 50% water change weekely, sometimes biweekly if I was really busy. I don't do it as often now, maybe biweekly, sometimes longer but that was after the "crash". I do vacuum now though.

Ferts-I was doing the standard EI doesing at the time but often skipped nitrates for most of the week, or dosed about 1/4 the amount.

co2-Pressurized, lime green on standard drop checker solution. Can't really elaborate further as that was the only thing I have ever had to test it. 

Waterhardness-No idea really. I have checked my tanks ever few months with 5 in one strips. I believe my tank was in the high 6's PH wise and 7.6-7.7 without CO2. My KH and GH were always very low, never registering past the first measurement. I don't recall the PPM that would be for either but it would be on the low side for sure.

Another thing, since my tank has "crashed", most of my plants don't pearl anymore. Now I have tried a fair amount of new things since, such as raising the lights up and reducing wattage, reduced ferts by about 3/4ths, and cut back on water changes. I did this over a period of time, changing one variable at a time. This seems to be the best thus far. I did get a very large algae outbreak soon after the crash as well, one of the big reasons for reducing the light. 

This was very high light in it's prime at 3.7 watts of T5 lighting as well. They were on the top of the tank for most, then I made a hanging fixture but they were never very high off the tank. Now I am at about 2.5 watt per gallon of T5, and I raised them about 12 inchs. I may still be in the "high light" range, depending on who you talk to, being that everything is t5, normal output.


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## Eden Marel (Jan 28, 2010)

I don't know, but wow it was a beautiful one. I can totally feel your pain or something like it just by looking at those pics


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

Any smells from the substrate?

that was a nice looking tank.
Stems need to be replanted once in a while though. They do break off. I wonder if it's a mean of propagation.


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## chad320 (Mar 7, 2010)

Only time ive ever had problems like this it was chlorine in my tap water. If your using tap water this is a likely culprit.


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## talontsiawd (Oct 19, 2008)

mistergreen said:


> Any smells from the substrate?
> 
> that was a nice looking tank.
> Stems need to be replanted once in a while though. They do break off. I wonder if it's a mean of propagation.


No smells. The substrate is a bit too deep and I expected to have smells but it did not. I would have been able to tell, I did drain the tank to check, found it smelled normal (that musty smell you get from every established tank), nothing strong and nothing out of the ordinary. When I set up again, using the same substrate, I have had the same issues, but used plants I knew would do fine in almsot any situation.

I understand stems come loose but it is a think where I can't even keep them down. I have certain areas where it always happens. I also never had this problem before the tank crashed, which was after about 2 years, and it hasn't gone away, even after the rinse.

I still don't get it, again, I assume it is the substrate, only because nothing changed in the time it crashed for months. I did make other changes to try to see if it was another factor and everything reacted as expected in terms of growth, etc, but still I have certain plants that won't stay down and certain places where no plants will stay down. It is just a "hypothesis" right now, I have experimented and things still point to the substrate but outside of replacing it, I really don't know how I can test it.


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## talontsiawd (Oct 19, 2008)

chad320 said:


> Only time ive ever had problems like this it was chlorine in my tap water. If your using tap water this is a likely culprit.


Would that be long term or something that happens immediately? The reason being, I have had other tanks setup over this time, but none were more than a year before I started something new. They have all used similar substrates, just different colors of Flourite. Never had a single issue with my other tanks.

I will often not use declorinator so this could be a good possibility if it would take awhile for effects to show and they are long lasting. If it is something that would happen ASAP and then go away, I would be confident that this is not the issue. The only difference between this tank and my 2 others have been time of estabilishment, lower light, and no CO2. Growth is still good in my tank as well, it is just things not staying down. I mean, it was better before but I did lower the amount of light and reduced ferts so the slower growth is to be expected.


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## chad320 (Mar 7, 2010)

Ive had it happen twice from the city adding too much chlorine to normally usable water. You can usually smell it if its enough to hurt your plants. I would also question how long ago the aquasoil was added. Ammonia around the root system can cause these conditions. So can aerobic conditions in your substrate which makes little air bubbles in the substrate that smell like sulphur. This is probably NOT the case since you rinsed it and it doesnt smell.
If you have room for a holding tank, you can fill it with tap water the night before your WC and put an airstone in it. This will dissipate all of the chlorine out of your water.


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## chad320 (Mar 7, 2010)

And DANG, THAT HURTS!!! Scrolling back up and looking at how beautiful your tank was. GREAT work, keep trying!


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## talontsiawd (Oct 19, 2008)

chad320 said:


> I would also question how long ago the aquasoil was added. Ammonia around the root system can cause these conditions. So can aerobic conditions in your substrate which makes little air bubbles in the substrate that smell like sulphur. This is probably NOT the case since you rinsed it and it doesnt smell.
> If you have room for a holding tank, you can fill it with tap water the night before your WC and put an airstone in it. This will dissipate all of the chlorine out of your water.


I never added any aquasoil to it, it's always been Flourite. 

Were the effects long term? I highly doubt that it's a consistant thing happening as I have always had another tank up since this happened. This happened awhile ago as well, I started over after rinsing and it got better but never at all how it used to be.


It's kind of a non issue at this point though. I have decided that I am going to replace my substrate and go with mineralized top soil. Once I do that, I will be on such a different setup that it will be too hard to really figure it out. I am just curious because this tank has been pissing me off for almost a full year now. 

One other thing, could it be possible that my Flourite absorbed to many nutrients? I know it's a long shot but I know with terrestrial plants, too much fertilizer can burn the roots and cause bad root issues. Just a shot in the dark. 

The plants do absolutely fine uprooted so that's why I keep coming back to the substrate.


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## chad320 (Mar 7, 2010)

Mmm...Idk about your substarte unless you did something else to it. I just broke down an 8 yr old tank so its do-able. I would like to know if you figure it out since ive seen some variables in this problem with myself and others. Do the ones that stay rooted loose their lower leaves? Sure wish Tom Barr would toss us an opinion. When chlorine got mine they lost lower leaves and rotted from the bottom up. Ammonia will go for the roots first from my recollection.


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## Diana (Jan 14, 2010)

You could try adding oxygen to the root area by injecting H2O2 with a syringe deep into the substrate. Do not use more than 1 teaspoon per 10 gallons. Try it in one area, see what happens.


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## talontsiawd (Oct 19, 2008)

Diana said:


> You could try adding oxygen to the root area by injecting H2O2 with a syringe deep into the substrate. Do not use more than 1 teaspoon per 10 gallons. Try it in one area, see what happens.


I tried that before and it didn't help. This was before I took everything down and rinsed it. To be clear, those pictures are from over a year ago. I rinsed it very well and things just haven't been the same. Thanks for the advice, I really didn't know if it would do anything but I did try it for about a week straight, just to see because nothing else was helping.

Again, I don't know if this is the issue, I was just wondering if this could be a possibility. I am going to redo my tank fairly soon, but it is halfway a curiosity thing, half way an "I don't want that to happen again" thing. 

I hate "strange" problems and I don't get why I had no trouble with this tank until it just died, after I started to learn, even with such high light. I mean, I did have some typical issues that any beginner would have (it was my first tank) but nothing major. Every other tank I have done has been a breeze. I have set up 3 tanks in the last year that never had a spec of algae, start to finish, but were medium to no light, but with no CO2. No matter what I do with this setup, it never has been close to what it was.


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

I wonder if this a nutrient thing then. The plants might have used up everything in the substrate.. Try adding a root tab.


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## KH2PO4 (Jul 18, 2009)

Could it be that there was some micro nutrients shortage?
When your plant biomass has increased to the point that it can support no longer.

It's hightlight with CO2 tank, isn't it? So nutrients consumption is high.

Have you tried leaving them alone to see if they could grow back by thamselves?
I'm now trying to single out which micro my tank is lacking that I've to dose 
6x the normal EI amount to prevent Stargrass from shoot melting.
It will grow to a point, then...POOF.

Not Fe. Not Ca. Not Mn. And probably not CO2. It seems Boron is the culprit 
because my traces mix has it much lower than Plantex CSM+B. Go figure.


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## talontsiawd (Oct 19, 2008)

This was a very highlight tank at the time. As said though, it really never recovered well, even when reducing the lighting. It is now medium light, well, medium light to me, 72 watts T5NO but 12 in above the tank (and 29 gallons are pretty tall for the capacity)

A bit before this, I started an auto does system. Now, I will not say it is doing as well as it was but I have reduced the light significantly both in wattage, photo period, and also how high the lights are off the tank. As said, I did EI doesing, just random doesing, etc, all worked fine and then POOF.

I believe my problem was having too much focus on micro nutrients. My autodoser is for Potassium, Magnisum and Nitrates. Because trace element ferts are labeled as "comprehensive" a lot, I would be more likely to make up a skipped day with trace instead of macro. I would also tend to does more trace when I felt my plants could use more. 

To me, it is all very ironic as so many people have told me to forget about ferts being so important. I am seeing more roots both above the soil and below now and my dosing is very consistent now that it is automatic. I still often forget to dose traces but it doesn't seem to matter so much, things are doing better. The plants that never seemed to suffer have gigantic root bases, leading me to find they really struggled to find nutrients as they did not seem to need such a large root mass in my other tank. That, and they are stems. 

I am not saying that this is solved, I am happy that my plants look better and grow better than before.


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