Plant Quality Issues

External Since: Oct 20, 2007 Posts: 2

Howdy Folks,

I have a moderately heavy planted 55g with a few workers, and a
handful of other fish. The tank actually was running with fish for
over a year before any planting was started. The bed is formed of
sand, smaller pebbles, and the a bag of time releasing nutrient stuff
you can buy for plants. Since the initial planting, things have went
somewhat well. The plants seemed to have transplanted well. My Ph
has been moderate, and I have been using occasional liquid fertilizer,
for 2-3 months. The plants seem to have good color, and have shown
some growth, and rooting. I installed a generic Co2 system 1 month
ago. ThisCo2 uses the sugar, and activators mixed together which
states it last up to 30 days a fill. I have done one small water
change (1/6?) with bottled spring water that I treated, and have
always used bottled thunderstorm rainwater for evaporation. My pH
levels seem to still be moderate, and I use two 70g filters. Within
the last 1-2 months, several of the plants have been forming a 'muck'
or 'sandlike' grain on them. Some of the narrow plants, like grasses
are getting covered so heavily it seems they are turning a light
brown. The discuss plant's leaves seem to have several strands or
strings of the sand growing off of them. I can brush or rub the
discuss leaves clean, but a few days later will be, again, covered in
strands. Is this a form of algae, or is this a plant disease? My
filters seem to be effective, and I have replaced the filters
components with new media a few times.

Any suggestions highly appreciated!

Newbie

External Since: Oct 17, 2007 Posts: 5

It sounds to me like diatom algae. Diatoms are eukariotic single celled
algaes that thrive in silicate rich water. It's a brown algae that looks
like dust or rust and covers anything and everything as it grows. If you are
using rain water for your tanks then the silicates aren't coming from your
water. It's probably because you used silica sand as your substrate instead
of quartzite sand, which has no silicates. You have two options, you can
introduce more janitors to help you which will eat it, or you can break down
the tank and re-do the substrate. The second option is a huge pain but may
be the only way to eliminate diatom algaes from this setup.

The best janitors that I know of for diatom outbreaks in freshwater tanks
are olive nerite snails. Olive nerites are actually a brackish water species
of snail that can survive in freshwater. The advantages they have over other
snails. They don't usually eat green plants (just algaes) unless those
plants have very sensitive or soft leaf structures (ex: Cabomba, Ambula,
etc.). They will however graze diatoms and other algaes off of plant leaves
without harming them. They require brackish water to reproduce, so if you
have them in fresh water, their eggs never mature and develop into baby
snails. This keeps their populations in check. They're tough as nails and
can survive temperatures from 50f to 100f.

They're a small snail, for a 55 gallon tank i'd suggest about a dozen or so.
If you have trouble locating them, surf over to www.franksaquarium.com.
Frank usually has them in stock. I love them, and have them in just about
every tank I have.

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