5 Gallon Tank dying plant during fishless cycle!

HI guys! It has been almost 3 weeks since I started the fishless cycle in the 5 gallon. One of the live plants is dying. The mystery plant is the one that is dying. This is how it look before:



And this how it looks now:


Here are my tank levels now:
Ammonia: 0.25
Nitrite: 2.0
Nitrate: 5.0

I'm using the add and wait method and I'm not sure if I should do a huge water change. Please help! Thanks.

 

usually I would say lack of water when a plant starts to looks like that buuuuut..... lol

Some type of nutrient deficiency is most likely.

 

So what can I do for the plant so it won't happen again?

 

Simply a change in water conditions has caused this.

If your conditions are conducive to growth it will recover in time.

It looks like a Cryptocoryne. They are so prone to this that the term "Crypt melt" has been coined.

 

Can a water change help? This is a newly set up tank that was up for 3 weeks.

 

A water change may or may not help the plant but it will slow down the tank cycling. It's hard to give advice without knowing for sure what type of plant it is. If you bought it at one of the chain pet stores it may not be a true aquatic plant which would be consistent with it dying off after a couple of weeks under water. Can you find out what type of plant it is?

 

sounds kinda like cypt melt to me, If the tank has what it needs it will come back and be just fine. It only looks like its the leaves and not the stems so that is a good thing.

 

A water change may or may not help the plant but it will slow down the tank cycling. It's hard to give advice without knowing for sure what type of plant it is. If you bought it at one of the chain pet stores it may not be a true aquatic plant which would be consistent with it dying off after a couple of weeks under water. Can you find out what type of plant it is?

Oh I bought this plant at the local pet store.. not a chain store.

But this plant is I think one of the Crypt species plants.