My Fish Tank :) and a question

[Osiris1975]

So, I've finally finished setting up my fish tank, added some live plants, 6 Zebra Danios, a Flame Dwarf and a powder blue gourami. Here it is:



I do have one concern so far and it relates the following photo:





I'm not sure what kind of sword plants these are, they have reddish stems and veins but green leaves. Some of the leaves have turned brown and I'm not sure why. My levels have been 0.25 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and 10-20 nitrates consistently. The pH is a little higher than I'd like, about 7.6 to 7.8, and the temperature has been between 76-79 degrees since I added the stock. I don't think lighting is a problem, I have 2.6 Watts per gallon of lighting that I can double with the flick of a switch if I need more. I've been adding a dose every other day of Flourish Excel as well.


And for the curious, my two gouramis:

[angel_love]

Are you sure its reading .25 for ammonia? Sometimes its hard to tell with the test kit I use, which is by api. I don't think that would be the problem for the plant, you might need to use something other than gravel but I'm no expert on that kind of plant. I do floaters and stuff I can tie to driftwood

[Osiris1975]

The red gravel you see is designed specifically for plants:

http://www.petsmart.com/product/inde...uctId=11147295

and I've got 3-4 inches of it. Where you see white gravel, that is a layer I put on top of the red stuff just for some color contrast. In the first picture, you can see a dark layer under the white stuff in the aquarium glass, that is all floromax.

[angel_love]

Huh I don't know then, sounds like a good setup for plants. Does the plant have new growth coming in?

[Cliff]

I'm not to farmilar with those plants.

What has worked for me in the past with similar plants (at least in appreace) was to use a plant fertilizer with excel. I had really good success making my plants look a lot heathlier by doing that.

Below are the two that I used along with excel

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/revi...ct=397&cat=500

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/revi...ct=396&cat=500

[Osiris1975]

Thanks Cliff I'll give those a try.

[smaug]

Even with a plant specific gravel the use of root tabs is still useful with sword plants.To be honest,your plants look great and I think they are "rose" echinodorus swords.The red will be more pronounced with stronger light. Can I assume they are newly planted? I see that they are planted correctly in the picture with just the plant gravel.Make sure that the white gravel is not covering there crowns or rotting away of the stems will occur at gravel line.The crown needs to stay exposed.
http://plantedtanks.net/plants/sword...-rose-pebbles/

[Osiris1975]

@Smaug, yes, they are indeed newly planted (about a week in the tank). So far, if anything with my other plants, I'm more concerned about exposing too much of the crowns and roots, because in some cases roots are sticking up out of the gravel because I had such a hard time planting them with their stiff roots. Is this going to be a problem?

@angel_love, I have the API master kit too, and I agree, it is hard to tell between 0.25 and 0 ppm.

[smaug]

The crowns of swords need stay above gravel,when I had swords there were also lots of roots above gravel as well. Once they establish,you wont have any issues keeping them rooted.The roots will go out from the plants all the way to the edges of the glass in some cases. The red will fade from your swords after they have been under med light for awhile,thats ok.Just another tip for your stem plants. It looks as if you planted them in bunches,I assume you left the ties on and just planted them as 1 bunch? If so,the correct way is to seperate them into individual stems and plant them about an inch apart.Planted in a group ,if one rots they will all rot. It can be a pain for sure and takes awhile to keep them all in the gravel when done this way but the results are awesome.

[blackman]

There is plant call runner that can grow without gravel just water and fish love it