# Brown leaves on Amazon Sword and Anacharis



## Kathyy (Feb 22, 2010)

Oftentimes plants are grown emersed and the leaves growing just fine in air die and new submerged growth appears. That could be the case with the sword plant. Anacharis is often grown under intense light and your perfectly good high intensity light isn't what it is used to. Haven't used Anacharis in an indoor tank but it is used as a fast growing nutrient sponge in ponds I think. Even so since you have a lot of light and are providing CO2 you need to provide all the nutrients, not just the micros in Flourish. Check out the stickies in the Fertilizer sub forum above this one. As well as water, CO2 and iron the plants must have nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. Fish poop can provide much of those but not in light light.


----------



## WillyJ (Jun 22, 2010)

Thanks Kathy! So would you recommend a weekly dosing regime like this (adapted from the "Dosing Regime's" thread):
Day1: 1/4 Tsp-KN03, 1/16 Tsp-KH2P04,1/16 tsp-K2S04
Day2: 5ml Trace, 1ml-Fe
Day3: 1/4Tsp-KN03, 1/16Tsp-KH2P04,1/16tsp-K2S04.
Day4: Same as day 2
Day5: Same as day 3
Day6: Same as day 2 
Day7: Nothing

Also, does "Trace" refer to Flourish? or does something like Plantex CSM + B fill this role better?


----------



## WillyJ (Jun 22, 2010)

Sorry about the newb questions, I wanna get this right


----------



## Aquaticz (Dec 26, 2009)

WillyJ said:


> Sorry about the newb questions, I wanna get this right


 
Hi Willy,
Frankly there is no right way. The doses you listed should be fine though as long as you have plant mass. What does that mean. It means that you stuff the tank with plants, plants that will suck up the excess nutrients, like hornwart, frog bit & lots of stem plants. 
Really the only way to tell is by observing. The thing to remember is that light drives everything and the amout of par given off by that light is what makes the difference. Plants also need a source of C02 and fertilizers in the water colulmn & substrate. I think most people freak out at dosing in the beginning. Once you have the chemistry down and have made a few solutions you will be a pro in no time. I make the solutions using a gram scale and distilled water. Some folks dose the fertilizers dry & have no problem. I still perfer the solutions because it is easy to log and see the difference. 
For some time I stopped dosing K as many say you get enough out of N. I recently started dosing K again and my plants are really liking it. Why, I am not sure but it is working for me. Every tank is diffrent- start at what you wrote & take it from there. You will not kill your fish or plant life by doing so. Just know what you are adding & do it on a regullar basis. One day Maco next day micro - take a day off & do a 50% water change the next day and then repeat the same every week. It does help to have fresh bulbs , then switch them out every 6 mothns or so, lots of people replace one at a time for cost reasons. HTH


----------



## Kathyy (Feb 22, 2010)

What Aquaticz wrote. I keep a running log of what ferts I put into my pill minder weekly then a good look at the tank and tweak things slightly if I think I can do better. As in I had been putting in Y amount of phosphate but GSA appeared so I increased the amount of phosphate to Yx1.2 this week. Looks good probably keep it the same. No matter now much potassium I dump in those hygro still get holes so I am trying out more GH booster instead.

That is a goodly amount of light for DIY CO2, might consider using more than one bottle at the very least. Or shade the tank with floaters. Or turn off one light.

Sometimes it just takes time for plants to get comfortable. I was seeing stunted growth on some stems for the longest time and now they have decided to shape up. Try to look for the improvement and not what is 'lost'. It is really rewarding to grow plants from a scrap of nothing much all on your own. I bought beautiful red rooted floaters from the SnS forum here. They looked great until the platies decided the roots were yummy and the water got too hot and they melted. Tank temperature is better and now half the tank is covered with better growth but not much red. I am having fun trying to get the plants larger and get those pretty red roots back. Since the tank also has yummy hairgrass in good shape am hoping the platies forget about the RRF.


----------



## WillyJ (Jun 22, 2010)

Awesome, thanks you two. I've ordered some dry ferts (my LFS doesn't sell them and had no idea where to buy them locally). Hopefully delivery doesn't take too long. I've added another 2L CO2 reactor as well as upgrading my filter to an Eheim Ecco 2232. Plants already look better, but I'm sure the ferts will help!


----------

