Struggling with plants in shrimp tank

[Nb623]

Hi,
I've just moved over from the old site, having trouble with my 25L shrimp tank. I think lighting may be the issue here but I recently brought 7 stem plants and slowly all of them have turned yellow and fallen apart (last one surviving is on the left but most of the leaves have gone). The plant on the wood on the right (Java fern?) Has been there and done okay but the leaves have lots of holes in. I've just ordered a Nicrew 247 strip light in the hope that it will provide a better spectrum of light than my current light with only white and blue LEDs. Is there any tips people have? Should I be going for a certain type of plant? Is there any good shrimp and snail safe fertiliser?
Thanks

[thebendyfox]

TNC Lite is safe for snails and shrimp, and available on Amazon.

Are all your plant varieties ones that are OK with no CO2? There’s also always a bit of a die-off when you plant new.

[Stephen]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Glad you found your way here.
Some liquid fertiliser such as TNC Lite may be required as plants require nutrients as well as light to grow.
Are you in a soft or hard water area?
If you have soft water then a liquid fertiliser may be essential, in a hard water area then there are more minerals in the water.
Only dose liquid fertiliser to about 20% of the recommendation on the bottle (maybe less) as you do not have a lot of plants.
Moss such as java moss is good in a shrimp tank, tie it to a piece of wood with some cotton. Shrimp will love it.
Plants that are described as "easy" would also be a good starting point.

All the best


Stay safe & healthy everyone

[Gingerlove05]

Hello and welcome
As mentioned some plants will melt/go yellow when first planted, this tends to happen while they establish roots and adapt to their new conditions (temp, water hardness, available nutrients etc)
If you clip off any leaves that are yellowing or have holes, this will encourage root growth and once settled it causes the plant to use energy to grow new leaves instead of trying to repair damaged ones.

[plankton]

Dose the ferts daily instead of weekly when you get them, and dose as Stephen recommends.
Shrimp don't take kindly to drastic changes in the water, so anything necessary you add will need to be built-up slowly.
I don't have a lot of luck with stem plants, I just keep cryptocoryne wendtii, ferns, moss, sword and anubia now. I don't use ferts/CO2 either.

[Nb623]

So do most plants need added CO2? I've always been worried about messing up pH with it. The general hardness is 60ppm (mg/L) and 40ppm (mg/L) with pH 7. Sorry I dont really know much about aquarium plants, I've always seemed to get lucky and plants have just 'taken', not been the case in this tank though.
Thanks

[thebendyfox]

To get the very best out of plants, and to keep many varieties, yes you need CO2.

However there are plenty of varieties that do NOT require CO2. If you look at Aquarium Gardens or Aqua Essentials website for “Easy” varieties, you can see which ones do and do not need CO2.

As Plankton and Stephen day: clip damaged leaves when you see them, and dose with ferts like TNC Lite. You could Also consider using some root tabs that you push into the substrate next to plants to give them a boost.

[Andys temperate tank]

Be careful adding root tabs. Some can cause an ammonia spike.

[thebendyfox]

Be careful adding root tabs. Some can cause an ammonia spike.

Good point - the ones I got were from Aqua Essentials and didn’t do this as far as I could see (during cycling so no spike detected)

[Martinspuddle]

Greetings.