Johnnyseed27

after a heater blowout in my 29g as well as an outbreak of disease, it crashed and killed all of the fish.
so i reset the tank up(tore it apart, got new filter media,and 3 bags of eco complete(2.5 used))
i ordered plants from aquariumplants.com because alot of people said it was good
there were a couple problems getting them but eventually i got them. they were in good conditon, but as expected died off abit, but they didnt stop they kept dying.i had an outbreak of snails and worms(couldnt get a close enough veiw, they were probably planaria) i replanted everything and removed dead leaves(besides anubias, just the vals, swords,and sags) they were still dying but i dont seem to see the worms and it seems like there are less snails
im getting really frustrated. i had watersprite, some sword plant, and 2 anubias nana's and they did great. now it seems like everything is going downhill
29gallon
48 watts t5ho(i have a second spare light that i dont use, but its the same one)
seachem flourish,iron,npk
no co2
plants
dwarf sag(just the roots in the substrate)
vallisneria(crown above substrate)
anubias (on dw,doing somewhat good)
swords(just roots in substrate)

i need to get rid of all the dead plants again
dont know what type the snails are, and i cant get a good enough picture
here are pics kind of embarrasing



an attepmt to get a snail pic


advice?
i know i need to get rid of the dead plants first, but then what?



ps for the fert schedule theres a thread somewhere for the seachem dosing thing and thats what i dose i was going for a thick background of valls, a nice carpet of dwarf sags, a little bush of anubias, and a nice group of swords on the side

Seattle_Aquarist

Hi Johnnyseed27,

A bid more information may help to avoid guesses.

Do you have any water parameters to share like temperature and hardness.

How long to you run your light?

Please confirm the Seachem products you are using; specifically are you using Flourish Comprehensive or Flourish Trace?

Johnnyseed27

10 hours from 6am to 4 pm
Don't know my hardness
Flourish(just flourish regular plain flourish, I think that's comprehensive, online on a picture of it in a tiny print it says comprehensive something )
Nitrogen
Potassium
Phosphorus
Iron

Ps mods, I'm at a relative's house so if there is any confusion about the ip address, it's probably because I'm not at my house

Johnnyseed27

i did it again and lost so many plants so i added old plastic plants i used to have. the tank is always at 78

Johnnyseed27

here are some pics i took today after replanting yesterday




i lost pretty much almost all my valls
i lost some sags
and i lost quite a few leaves from the sword

Johnnyseed27

Now there looks like a few more leaves are going.
I found a big snail compared to the others. It is orange and has blackish brown dots and isn't cone shaped. Unfortunately the camera doesn't like taking pictures.

Seattle_Aquarist

Hi Johnnyseed27,

I am guessing that your bulbs are about 6500K? You don't have a lot of plants in there, possibly you are over-fertilizing.

If it were me, I would do a 50% water change to 'reset' the tank. For the next two weeks skip the NPK and just dose the Seachem Flourish per the instructions on the bottle. Don't change anything else.

After 2 weeks let us know how it is going and throw up a pic if possible.

Johnnyseed27

I now see a 2nd big one and some other one a different type. So there's at least 2 different types.
I have the current nova extreme USA fixture thing. I never looked at the k but it's 12 which kinda is high. The other just says flora freshwater and it's pink. Gonna do a 50% change now. Thanks. Hopefully it works out.

Edit
Done with water change

Johnnyseed27

Ok the 2 week update
I guess I accidentally killed my bacteria and at the time I wasn't aware or testing. Just adding a tiny bit every day, but I guess it built up and I tested ammonia yesterday and got dark blue(pretty much black) didn't get to do a pwc yesterday, did one today and doing one tommorrow if I have time because of midterms studying.
Anyway the plants haven't really died off anymore, but they don't seem like they are growing. I have a big outbreak of diatoms. The anubias nana's are hit pretty hard and it's not wiping off for some reason.
Been dosing just the flourish.
Okay what I need to do
-change bulbs(im overdue and get 6700k)
-probably gonna get watersprite sooner or later, I was very successful with that.

Tex Gal

I just read this thread and I can't follow what you have been doing. It sounds like you haven't been measuring the amount of fertilizer you have been adding. I'm also not clear on what type of flourish you are using. If you check on the back of your actual bottle (not the web site) you will be able to see if it is just the trace elements or if it is the macros like Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorus. Seachem used to make Flourish Comprehensive but I haven't seen it for quite a while. They make the macros in separate bottles now. Their regular Flourish is now just micros (trace minerals). If your fertilizer is ONLY trace minerals you are loosing your plants because you have NO macros.

To have such high ammonia there has to be a reason. Do you have too many fish, feed too much?... The fertilizer would not have raised your ammonia but would have tested high nitrate. A water change would not have killed your bacteria. Did you treat the water with Prime or something similar. Did you clean your filter and use regular tap water with chlorine or chloramines? That would kill your bacteria. It also is possible that you could have had the high ammonia from all the rotting leaves. Did you leave them in there? Plants will eat up the ammonia. You need some really heavy feeding plants like floaters or watersprite, hornwort - fast growers. You also need to keep up the water changes with such high ammonia or it will kill your fish.