Pogostemon Issue

Hi, why the pogostemon stellatus bending and leaning like that

Some of my stem plants have bent like that when the lighting was extra strong. I've played around with this a bit out of curiosity. When I put excessive amounts of light on my tank, some of my stem plants didn't even want to grow up much at all. For example, my Hygrophila difformis acted more like a carpeting plant. Any chance you have extra strong lighting?

I'm no expert but I fought the same thing with stem plants in my new tank, so here's what I learned while digging into it.
Stems bending or leaning like that is almost always light-related. Two flavors of it:
- **Bending toward the light** — plain phototropism. The plant is literally aiming its growth at the brightest point. If the tops all curve toward your fixture, that's the tell.
- **Strong light making them crawl** — with really intense light some stem plants stop growing upright and start growing sideways along the surface, almost like a carpet. It looks like drooping but it's actually the plant hunkering down.
A couple of other things worth ruling out:
- **Crowding** — if the stems are packed tight, each one shades the next and they lean looking for an opening. Thinning them out a bit gives every stem its own light and the lower leaves stay alive too.
- **Flow** — a strong outlet pointed right at a row of stems will push them over in one direction. Easy to check: does the lean match the direction your filter output points?
If it were my tank I'd first try raising the light a few inches or trimming the photoperiod down to around 7 hours for a couple of weeks and see if the new growth comes in straighter. Older leaves won't un-bend, so judge by the fresh tops.
Quick question so the folks here can narrow it down: which light are you running and how many hours a day? And does the bend point toward the fixture, or off to one side?

Week aqua 50w mounted 17 above the water surface
Just recently reduced its intensity from 80 to 70%, so it obviously a too intense light issue. Here a photo of an old layout where I believe the light was set to 40%, see how the same pogostemon having an upright growth pattern

However, I suspect this is not entirely light issue, and also mismanagement of water circulation, causing currents to create extreme turbulence in the middle of the tank. I had internal filter on one side pane and powerhead connected to horizontally two rows spray bar on the other side, just corrected it by moving the filter to the powerhead side, the flow pattern should be at the same direction. Extreme stagnant section I had.