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First I setup the tank not really planning to have plants and unable to buy anything but gravel from local stores. I ended up with 50/50 tahitian moon sand and eco complete. How good is that for plants? I've never even seen flourite around here.
2nd my plants leaves are turning yellow. My apongeton is yellow/brown all along the edges of the leaves. I added a really green amazon sword and the color seems to have just faded out of the old leaves and 1 of the younger leaves has a yellow/brown patch in the middle. Lots of small water changes stopped it for awhile but the yellow is spreading.

55g
40w of actinic, 120w of aquaglo
penguin 330 filter
nitrates:15-25
ph:8.6
kh:15
gh:18
Plants:lots of apongeton, 3 dwarf lilly, hairgrass(won't grow), dwarf hairgrass, pennywort, 2 java fern, 1 amazon sword, micro swords, maybe some java moss on the driftwood but I never got it to grow and it kept getting sucked into my filter so I pulled most of it out.
fish: 8congo tetras, 5otos, 1 farlowella, 1 blue gourami, 4panda cory, uncountable applesnail babies

I'm working on setting up co2 and haven't tried using any ferts yet. My water is rather high in iron so I'm not sure what to add.

Hi,
First, check out this site:

http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_nutrient.htm

This site describes the various symptoms of plants in
relationship to the nutrients that they are lacking.

Generally speaking the yellowing of leaves is a symptom
of iron deficency. While you say you have iron in the
water, in all probablity, it is in a form that the plants
cannot use.

Amazon Swords are considered "heavy" root feeders, and
while you don't say it, it sounds as though the tank was
fairly recently setup. In other words, the bactria may
not yet have built up any appreciable stores of nutrients
for the plants. For the sword, I would use plant tablets
or plant sticks pushed into the gravel near the roots.
If you choose to use the sticks, and the sword is rather
small, you could cut the sticks in half and put one at
each compass point.

EcoComplete can be mixed with gravel, but of course you
will not get the same benifit from that as you would with
100%.

I suggest you will need to add fertilizers, both liquid
and subsurface.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Tank has been set up 8 months. I forgot my wendtii crypts that I started with. I just redid the whole tank and moved everything around then added the java fern, microswords, and gigantic amazon sword a week or 2 ago. Reading on that site it doesn't seem like iron. New leaves grow in green and shortly before reaching full size start to yellow. The youngest leaves on the sword are still dark green while the older ones have already started to turn pale and yellowish. The top older leaves on the apongeton are yellow with brown edges. I would say it looks more like the description for zinc or potassium. The crypts are still growing ok and 1 lilly plant for unknown reasons but otherwise everything just seems stuck even with the high light. The algae has no complaints though.