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I recently purchased some new banana plants and rosette swords. A couple of the stalks on the banana plants look to be dying off, the leaves browning in places, and some of the rosette sword leaves are browning as well.

Is this common? I do have a fairly high pH due to our hard water, and it will not budge downward.

0ppm Amm; 0ppm Nitrite; 20ppm Nitrates 8.0 pH 74 degrees F

I feed with root tabs and liquid ferts. Right now, I am running a "standard" flourescent light that came with the hood.

usually leaves die as a way of acclimating and new leaves should come with in the next few weeks. but if you feel the crown and roots and they are brown or mushy then it is an good as trash...

\\\\\\\"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure\\\\\\\"

I am not sure if rosette swords are like ozelot swords, but all the ozelot swords I see around here appear to have been raised emersed. The emersed leaves are actually different from the submersed leaves, and my ozelot's swords emersed leaves have been dropping over the week, while the submersed leaves have been hanging around. Of course, I went to the LFS today and saw some plants without ANY submersed leaves grown in yet, and I'd hate to see how those would take the transfer to my tank...

I am likewise running pretty much the standard fluouresecnt in my hood, except mine is a couple years old now. My tank is a standard 125, so the two foot depth probably doesn't help either. Probably not the best lighting situation for plants, which is why I'm getting new bulbs soon.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

scott,
this is not helpful to you but
i just heard about teddy
R.I.P teddy

33 gallon 7 neon tetras-5 platys-3 bleeding heart tetras-2 corys-1 rainbow shark-2 L83 gibby plecos

Increasing the lighting should do some good. I don't know how long you keep the light but the length of time they are exposed to light can influence growth patterns in many plants.