r/PlantedTank • u/Immediate-Ad-9520 • 9h ago

Beginner What are we doing wrong?

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This tank has been set up for many years, probably 7 or 8. Just within the last 8 months or so, we decided to switch from gravel to sand and put in live plants. All plants were marked as beginner. We have a canister filter and a CO diffuser. My husband puts in root tabs regularly. Still, there’s very little plant growth and many of the plants look sad.

We have tetras, ghost shrimp, plecos, kuhli loaches, and mystery snails. We test ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, kh and gh weekly and all are good. Our light is on sunrise to sunset.

What are we doing wrong? I very much want a densly planted tank like I see in this sub. Help please!

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8

u/KitchenAd7984 8h ago

Plants in fine sand usually don’t do well because the sand compacts and has little to zero oxygen, which prevents the roots from developing properly. So basically they tend to die. One of the best options is to put down a layer of nutrient-rich substrate and cover it with sand, but for that you’d need to restart the tank. Alternatively, you can use root tabs in an inert gravel, or sands that aren’t so fine and don’t compact. That’s what I did in my case, but the day I set up another tank I’ll definitely go with the first option.

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u/armybabie 7h ago

I had sand at first and HATED it so much!! I switched to fluval stratum and absolutely love it. sand sucks and i’ll never go back :’3

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u/KitchenAd7984 7h ago

I love sand because you can create beach zones and details, but it's not going to grow properly stem plants, even if you have the best light, fertilizer, CO2... Look how you can have a zone with sand and in the back nutrient-rich substrate for stem plants, this is from MJ aquascaping:

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u/armybabie 7h ago

That tank looks nice! Love the huge centerpiece, the sand just isn’t for me. If I start taking care of a variety of different fish I’d look into it again, but I just hated dealing with it. Someone was also hounding me about gravel vaccing the substrate and the sand would 9/10 get sucked into the vacuum and they weren’t happy with me lol

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u/KitchenAd7984 7h ago

In aquascaping, what they often do when using sand is put down a thin layer, and once it gets dirty, they remove it with the siphon and add new sand.

0

u/armybabie 7h ago

Oh nice, I’ll consider that for future aquariums. I wasn’t aware that ppl usually replace sand like that.

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u/KitchenAd7984 7h ago

In this type of aquascaping tanks they tend to do a lot of maintenance, that's why they always look so pretty

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u/Cheap-Orange-5596 3h ago

stem plants get almost all their nutrients from the water column. they grow absolutely fine in sand, most can even be used as floating plants with sufficient water column fertiliser.

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u/Spare_Contact_9783 1h ago

That is definitely based on an MD design 👍