# My Dwarf Baby tears plants are dying? suggestions plz!



## midart

Hi,

I'm new to planted tanks, I did a lot of reading and finally setup my planted tank. but cannot sustain plant growth, not sure if my plants are diseased or nutrient deficiency. noticing this is all my plants in the tank

I'm trying to carpet baby dwarf tears on the forground, have grass on the background ( no fishes added)
Need some help badly...

::: SETUP :::
*TANK* : 40G Breeder - Aqueon
*LIGHT* : Odyssea Quad T5 39Wx4 lighting ( running at 7 hours a day )
*SUBSTRATE* : Flourite Black sand 1 inch ( for 1 inch at the bottom, washed a million times to remove the cloudiness ) Added 10 seachem root tabs across the substrate
*SUBSTRATE* : On top of Flourite I used Aquasoil and Aquasoil powder to make the landscape ( been reading aquasoil is more nutrient rich than Flourite 
*CO2* : Milwaukee MA957 CO2 Regulator + and diffuser + 10 pound tank
*FILTER* : Fluval 406 canister starting with 1 compartment foam, 2 compartments of biomax, 1 compartment of Activated carbon as the last one.
Temperature: 26 degree Celsius, 78 degree F

*::: PLANTS :::*
Eleocharis Acicularis Hairgrass ( background grass)
Hydrocotyle tripartita Pennywort Plant 
Baby Drwarf tears HC Cuba - foreground plant... this is dying not sure why.. 


*::: FISH :::*
None

Any and All improvements welcome.


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## aquarist

Are you using any kind of fertilizers?

First thing that came to mind when I saw your plants is "plant melt" perhaps the HC you bought was grown emersed and is having a hard time adapting to submersed. I have seen a few people have this problem in the past.


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## midart

Your right, i got my 1st set on Ebay and this came in small packs that was emersed.. but I'm having the same problem with another batch i got form LFS that was submersed.

no fertilizers, only added root tabs, but the water already smells filthy , I did 2 water changes already, but it still gets cloudy, i guess thats because of aquasoil.

but all my plants are are loosing its green color and i feel they are becoming TRANSPARENT :help:


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## midart

I'm also using ADA Green Brighty Step 1 (4 pumps/day) and ADA Brighty K ( 4 pumps/day)


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## Raymond S.

Basically you have incomplete ferts/w too high of light for that low of plants.
People use that much light when they have many fast growing plants and complete ferts. This link gives a good description of it in easy to understand terms.
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=107303
Also most(but not all) people say Dwarf Baby Tears are hard to grow for people
who don't have a lot of experience/w plants.
That soil may give off a lot of ammonia for the first few weeks. Probably what you smell. Not sure if that brand does it though.
That is what ADA Amazonia does.


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## midart

Thanks for the info.

I will try going dual lights.

Will having too much light impede or kill plants?

I'm planning to get Flourish as a fertilizer to start off with before i go with the chemical approach.
http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Flourish.html

Is my plants really melting? I see them turning pale to transparent  as if they are not nutrient rich... not sure since this is my 1st tank :iamwithst


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## aquarist

Aquasoil is ADA Amazonia. 

I also agree that you probably have too much light and too little plant. It is a hard balance to start with honestly. If you bought that HC from a big box pet store it was probably grown emerged and they just stuck them in their tanks when they got them, you can find some people here on TPT that have guaranteed submersed grown HC, you could try some of that if you don't have much luck with with you currently have. A good and cheap way to increase your plant mass is to go to the big P petstore and buy all the Egeria Densa they have, it is usually around $0.50-$0.60 cents for a bundle of 3-4 stems, just fill in all the blank spots and over time you can remove it. Egeria Densa is a really great plant and is easy to grow, it grows fast and absorbs lots of toxins and nutrients from the water. When I ship live stock I always include some Egeria Densa, likewise I grow it in a lot of my aquariums, and right now is it in a zero tech (no filter, air stone, light, or heater, its literally a bowl with water, shrimp and the Egeria Densa)shrimp bowl keeping about 20 cherry shrimp alive. 

HC is a delicate plant, I had it growing in two of my aquariums and it was lush and really bright green and then one day it let lose from the substrate and I could never get it to grow in the substrate again. What you can try and do is remove it from your substrate and tie it to a lava rock, I have seen people have success with this method, I personally have not tried it though.


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## Hoppy

HC needs good CO2 to grow well. How are you setting the CO2 bubble rate? If you use a drop checker correctly you can quickly get the bubble rate near the best setting, then it is much easier to slowly increase it to get the optimum bubble rate for your particular tank setup.


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## MedRed

I don't agree with too much light and too little plant. I haven't been around in awhile, but I was growing most of my tanks out from 150w and even 250w metal halide from day one. 

My opinion is the stress the HC is going through changing over from emmersed to immersed along with the chemistry of a cycling tank. Do you have your CO2 dialed in? I've found HC easiest to grow in an established tank or by growing it with the dry start method and then flooding the tank.


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## Agent69

Hc doesn't necessarily need high light to grow. I'm growing it with low par , co2, and ferts. I threw a root in my tank for the heck of it well to my surprise that tiny root grew to a full patch.


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## MedRed

High light isn't going to necessarily kill it either.


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## midart

Hoppy said:


> HC needs good CO2 to grow well. How are you setting the CO2 bubble rate? If you use a drop checker correctly you can quickly get the bubble rate near the best setting, then it is much easier to slowly increase it to get the optimum bubble rate for your particular tank setup.


I'm having 3 bubbles per second on the bubble counter, should i increase this?

Is there a reason why the leaves of a submerged HC cuba [dwarf baby tears] turning yellow?

Is there a cycle period after which I should try HC Cuba [dwarf baby tears] again?


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## MedRed

do you have a drop checker? The leaves that are yellowing are dying for whatever reason. There will often be some loss when HC is going from terrestrial growth to submerged growth. Some are able to get HC dialed in from go. My best results were when I grew it out in moist aquasoil for a few weeks and then flooded the tank. Even planting this way, I lost some HC in areas that were too wet. Even after flooding, there was some die back, but eventually everything filled in nicely. 

Day 1 in moist aquasoil









Week 4 in moist aquasoil









Week 5 add water


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## Agent69

MedRed said:


> do you have a drop checker? The leaves that are yellowing are dying for whatever reason. There will often be some loss when HC is going from terrestrial growth to submerged growth. Some are able to get HC dialed in from go. My best results were when I grew it out in moist aquasoil for a few weeks and then flooded the tank. Even planting this way, I lost some HC in areas that were too wet. Even after flooding, there was some die back, but eventually everything filled in nicely.
> 
> Day 1 in moist aquasoil
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> Week 4 in moist aquasoil
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> Week 5 add water


Do you mist the dry start with just water or do you add ferts, excel, etc?
Some people say to add excel to the water so you don't get fungus or mold.

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk


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## MedRed

Agent69 said:


> Do you mist the dry start with just water or do you add ferts, excel, etc?
> Some people say to add excel to the water so you don't get fungus or mold.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk


I found that the HC grows much better if there is no standing water in the tank during the process. I misted down the the aquasoil to the point that there was standing water and then let the aquasoil soak up what it could. I then attached a piece of rigid tubing to airline tubing and siphoned out the standing water. I didn't have any issues with mold or fungus at all. 

I used two spray bottles. One had a little miracle grow and the other was just regular water. I misted twice a day and after two weeks I used the fertilizer bottle once a week. I siphoned the water out whenever it was starting to break the surface. I used saran wrap to cover the top of the tank to keep the moisture in. Keep in mind that some of your taller hills will dry out at the top before everything else does.


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## davido

Yeah I have the same issue also.

So if the HC is dying due to the stress of going from immersed to submersed, then what can be done at this stage? Surely its not feasible to drain the tank at this stage.

So does this mean that the HC are doomed to die or will they adapt and recover in time? My HC is only 3 days old and already showing signs of withering.


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## Qwedfg

Bumping the CO2 is the best thing you can do atm. From what I see you have no live stock so making sure CO2 is abundant will help them transition. Also check the placement of your diffuser. Your tank is fairly large so a diffuser won't be the most efficient method of CO2 distribution. You want to make sure it is on the opposite side of the flow from your filter so the bubbles get pushed down and around the tank.


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## MedRed

What qwedfg said. I'd actually place it under your filter intake to ensure better distribution.


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## davido

Qwedfg said:


> Bumping the CO2 is the best thing you can do atm. From what I see you have no live stock so making sure CO2 is abundant will help them transition. Also check the placement of your diffuser. Your tank is fairly large so a diffuser won't be the most efficient method of CO2 distribution. You want to make sure it is on the opposite side of the flow from your filter so the bubbles get pushed down and around the tank.


Thanks, good point. There's no live stock in the tank. But if the PH is already at 5.5, bumping up the CO2 will cause the PH to drop further. If PH drops to 5, would that be too acidic for the plants?


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## Frop

Im attempting to grow dwarf baby tears as well. Some times yellowing is a sign of nutrient deficiency.

http://www.seachem.com/downloads/charts/Flourish-Constituents-Deficency.pdf

Here is a chart


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