Ross Vandegrift wrote in message
m...
Hello everyone,

My 20Gal long tank, with 2wpg, had something happen to it a few
months ago. My plants stopped growing well. I've been too busy with
school to worry too much about, but I did the obvious things as the
plants slowly died off - stopped dosing fertilizer so much and cut down
the light. It was bad - all of a sudden all my Java Fern died. Sunset
Hyugro won't grow in the tank now.

Finally, I got sick of the algae and the bare tank, so I hit up
the LFS and lucked out - just had a fresh shipment! Picked up some
awesome looking camboba, red tiger lotus, giant hygro, and something I
forget that looks like bacopa with smaller leaves. Planted em up, went
back to some fertilizer dosing, made sure my DIY CO2 reactor was
running, and turned the lights back up to 10 hours.

This was last friday. Most of the new plants are dying already.
The camboba seems to have rotted almost the instant I planted in the
gravel. The bacopa-like plants' leaves are slowly turning brown and
getting ready to fall off. The red tiger lotus is ok for now, but I
suspect my 2wpg won't be enough for it ultimately.

So, more or less, it was a total failure. I'm wondering what on
earth could be wrong. My water parameters are normal. I change 3-4
gallons on a monthly basis. And this tank, exactly as I'm running it
now, was previously very, very successful.

I thought that perhaps the tank had been contaminated, but this
seems unlikely - I've had fish in it through all of this (australian
rainbows, ottos, and bolivian rams) and they've been healthier and more
beautiful than ever.

Any ideas for something I'm overlooking?

How old are the lights? Flourescents should be changed every 6-12 months,
CF every 18-or-so months. They may still be working - in other words,
turning on - without providing sufficient spectrum for photosynthesis.