# Some plant help needed please



## Spicy MacHaggis (Oct 2, 2012)

Hello everyone! Long time since I've been here, but that's good because I haven't had problems lately. Until now. I've had a lot of plants dying off lately (some that have been in for a long time), and my water looks to be discolored slightly yellow. Fish seem to be ok, haven't lost one in well over a month. Ammonia is 0, nitrite is 0 and nitrate was around 20. Rank had been established for almost 4 years. Any ideas what could be going on?


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## chenowethpm (Jan 8, 2014)

Has your source water changed? What's your kh, gh, ph? What's your maintenance schedule? What lights and how long are they on? Ferts? Root tabs? Co2? 

More info needed.


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## Spicy MacHaggis (Oct 2, 2012)

I'm not sure how to test for kh and gh, but my house does have a water softener. My ph is pretty high at 8.4. I do around 20% water changes every two weeks, but sometimes gets pushed to three depending on schedule. I did move to a new house about 7 months ago, but I brought old tank water with and aclimated the tank to the new water slowly. The light is a marineland aquatic plant led thats on sunlight for about 12 hours a day and moonlight about 4. I used iron tabs in the past, but I noticed after adding the light many of the plants began growing at a really fast pace, so I slacked off on them. For three years they've been growing great, now they're all dying out.


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## susankat (Nov 15, 2008)

Sounds like old tank syndrome. You need to start upping your water changes to a larger percentage and at least once a week. You should also start dosing ferts.


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## Arthur7 (Feb 22, 2013)

If CO2 is missing, and then to where miracles happen with the plants.


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## BBradbury (Apr 22, 2011)

Spicy MacHaggis said:


> Hello everyone! Long time since I've been here, but that's good because I haven't had problems lately. Until now. I've had a lot of plants dying off lately (some that have been in for a long time), and my water looks to be discolored slightly yellow. Fish seem to be ok, haven't lost one in well over a month. Ammonia is 0, nitrite is 0 and nitrate was around 20. Rank had been established for almost 4 years. Any ideas what could be going on?


Hello ****...

Water that continuously moves through a filter system, soon looses needed minerals to sustain both fish and plants. Small tanks up to 20 gallons need half the water changed every few days. Larger tanks need a 50 percent change weekly. The longer the water stays in the tank, the worse the water chemistry becomes.

B


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## Spicy MacHaggis (Oct 2, 2012)

I just did another about 20% change, and I'll do another tomorrow. Because of the dry winter air I'm getting a lot of evaporation, so I'll need to better stay on top of that. The water I pulled out of the tank was now near brown. I'll report back with any change in the coming days. Thanks for the advice all!


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