Please Help – Tank getting overrun and ruined!

I have recently bought a 55 Gallon tank as of a little over a month ago. Everything looked great for about 3 weeks until I noticed some of my leaves began to brown then turn clear on the ends. I thought nothing of it because all of my tests came back in range, the fish looked happy, and also the water looked clear. I trimmed the dead leaves, and gave it weekly 40% water changes but the plants still looked the same. They didn’t seem vibrant at all nor anything like the pictures of other peoples aquariums and setups. I did some research and ended up buying Flourish tabs and placing them in the substrate along with adding Flourish excel every other day Shortly before or during doing this I saw green looking algae on the leaves as well and the substrate sand floor. I had read in some posts to feed the fish less and turn the light on only 8 hours a day, so far have done this for a week and haven’t noticed any changes. Furthermore, I can see that the green substance on my plants is starting to give them brown spots as well and eat through them. The Nerite snails have eaten a lot of algae (put them in the tank last week) but still isn’t cutting it

Q: What can be causing my plants to become discolored and then brown/clear?

Q: What is the best option to fix this problem?

Q: Is there anything I should be concerned about in my setup?

Thank You for your feedback I appreciate the help in getting my tank back!!

TANK STATS
55 Gallon Acrylic Aquarium
Eco-Complete Sand Substrate
Eco-Complete Black Substrate
Beamswork LED Pent 36 0.50W Timer Aquarium Light 130x 0.50W LEDs
· Lumen: 5700
· LEDs: 130x 0.50W
· Config: 114x 10000K, 16x Actinic 460nm
· 2 Modes: All on / Moonlight only
· Suitable for freshwater fish, cichlid, Marine FOWLR

Aquaclear 70 Power Filter
5lb CO2 Cylinder w/Regulator emitter
GLA Atomic 60mm Co2 Diffuser @1-2 bubbles per second
Bubbler w/sandstone
Seachem constant ammonia reader
Constant pH reader
Digital temperature reader


Plants
Banana lilly (back left)
Staurogyne repens (front)
Java ferns (left and right middle)
Java Moss (driftwood and rocks on right)
Merimo moss balls x4
Baby tears (in back) (look almost dead after only a week)

Fish
2x Gourami
16x neon tetras
9x rummy nose
4x dwarf angel
2x guppies
3x tiger barbs
6x gold dust mollys
4x nephrite snails (just added due to algae)

Readings

Temp: 75-78 degrees
pH: 6.6-7.0
Co2 – 1-2 bubbles per minute
Ammonia – 0 ppm
Nitrates – 0 ppm
Nitrites – 0 ppm

· Was running a timer for the lights to be on 10 hrs per day, now switched to 8 hrs per day
· Only run co2 when the light is on due to exchange of o2 and co2 in the tank during photosynthesis
· Bubbler kept on during the light hours only
· Each week I have maintained 30-40% water changes
· Every other day I have been placing flourish excel in the tank as of 2 weeks ago
· Fish are fed 2-3 times a day

 

First, I would cut back on the feedings and also on the ferts, half dose is fine. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of this is to do with the lights since they're not ideal for planted tanks.

I'm going to call on Anders247 to have a look at your stocking. I've never heard of a dwarf angel before so I recommend keeping an eye on aggression. 4 angels may be pushing it in a 55.

Also, did you cycle your tank before you added the fish? Do you have nitrate-reducing media in your filter?

And your temperature is too low for some of the fish you have/some of your fish have different temperature requirements. Angels I know for sure are warm water tropical fish while neons are cooler water.

 

a couple things I noticed..
you are probably running into a nutrient deficiency. you have a partial high tech tank with pressurized co2 while having an inert substrate(sand) as well as not dosing fertilizers in the water column.
the root tabs may help a bit but you aren't going to have trouble growing dwarf baby tears on sand.
that plant in the right side with the white striped leaves is not a true aquatic plant and will slowly melt and rot in the tank attracting algae etc once your plants start struggling algae will take hold even more.
cutting back on feedings to once a day will help as well.

 

Thanks for the quick response guys!

What lights would you suggest aquaphobia? I like LEDs because of their low emission of heat and low use of electricity. I know plants do best with blue and red spectrum lights. I cycled the tank over a couple of days and the readings were steadily optimum. From day 1 I haven't had a spike or anything over 0 for the nitrates and nitrites. I have a bio-filter and have beneficial bacteria from the eco-complete substrate. I HAVE noticed that most fish I have prefer temperatures when they were 79-80 degrees but didnt want to keep the temperature that high because of the loaches and the tetras as you stated before. The fish are very peaceful and get along, but the main problem I'm having is the plants dying and also the green algae? Any suggestions will be great! Again thanks for the response

JuscallmeJ: The baby tears are actually planted in the gravel eco-complete substrate. Ill remove the plants on the right as you said (you probably are right, the green "algae" started there). Ill also but back on the feedings to once a day and keep you guys updated. I have algae tabs and fish food, since I have a considerable amount of fish what would you suggest?

Again. Thanks for the input!

 

I like LED's too! There are ones that are geared to planted tanks, but they can be very expensive. Or not! I've found that for my purposes there are some very reasonably-priced LED options. Plus, if you have any basic electrical skills you can build your own using parts readily available online.

Unfortunately, cycling a tank takes at least a couple of weeks and a source of ammonia which then gets converted to nitrites and then to nitrates. Most cycled tanks have as the end result zero ammonia, zero nitrites and some nitrates

 

Fish
2x Gourami
16x neon tetras
9x rummy nose
4x dwarf angel
2x guppies
3x tiger barbs
6x gold dust mollys
4x nephrite snails (just added due to algae)

Welcome to fishlore!
What type of gouramis?
What is the exact species of angelfish?
I would recommend rehoming the tiger barbs and mollies.

 

Anders,

The gouramis are Dwarf Gourami's. Unfortunately one died yesterday soon after acquiring two red spots I believed to be DGIV a couple of days ago . 2 of the angelfish are half black veil angelfish and the other two are angelfish white yellow head. The fish look great and colorful, I'm just worried about the plant situation.

 

Sorry for your loss.

 

The 10000k light is the culprit here. 10k Kelvins are great for saltwater tanks with corals, and cause major algae issues in planted tanks. For a planted tank, you want a light of about 7000 kelvins. You also want to make sure it's specifically for planted tanks, and make sure it's a full spectrum light.

There are tons (and I mean tons) of affordable LEDs for planted tanks available on ebay. Finnex makes really nice lights, but there are also off-brand lights that are dirt cheap and work really well.

And for the record, dwarf angels are actually a thing, and they are really cool. But the angels in your tank aren't the dwarf species from what you described. The dwarfs are a wild type and won't have that sort of coloring and veiled angels are definitely not a dwarf species.

 

Thanks for the input Junebug, after doing research I realized the same thing about the angelfish. So far I ripped out the baby tears in the back of my tank which were dying anyway and changed the light timer from 10 hours to 8 hours. So far its been about a week and the algae actually seemed to almost completely go away. Ill post some pictures when I get back home. If the algae doesn't go away after another week, I'll have to get a planted light and drop some $ but hopefully that isn't the case (crossing my fingers!)

 

Great! Yeah, dying plants will create a lot of algae, because of the excess nutrients they're dumping into the water column.

I am not kidding about the lights on Ebay. I bought a really nice small light for my gecko tank for about 10 bucks and it's growing the plants in there. I think the most I've spent there on the offbrand lights for my aquariums was $30.00. Not bad at all considering they're on par with my fluval brand lights, but interestingly cast a much more natural hue into my tanks.

 

I just wanted to thank you guys for all the responses. As you can see I have cleared out my tank and even though it looks bare at the moment there is no more algae!

As of right now I'm thinking about a new planted light or adding an additional planted light to my setup. I was thinking of splurging and getting the finnex fugeray planted +, Currentusa Sat+PRO, Ecoxotic E-series, or Edge or a Finnex 24/7 (which I really like but have not seen). Please send me in the right direction!

FYI I found the main culprit of the plants. My Buenos Aires tetras (unbeknownst to me) are plant eaters and will destroy a tank in days if not fed in abundant amounts. Because of my algae outbreak I cut down feeding to once a day and cut down the lights also. Now my plants are pretty much eaten because of it. I have a taker for the 4 BA tetras so after that I will replant the tank. I have done some research about the other fish I have and plants and they all seem fine