"Prakash" wrote in message
...
Bob,
I've got 80 watts of light. The water is quite hard - actually in most of
the UK what comes out of the tap is liquid cement. Does this cause a huge
problem ? The plants seem to be growing fine.The elodea and the cabomba
grow
rapidly but then come off the bottom. The elodea has plenty of roots
springing from the stem.
Are these plants not supposed to be pushed into the sand ?
Cheers,
Prakash.


I would assume with a sand sunstrate you are not running a UGF. In which
case your setup is very similar to one of my tanks (except I don't have the
CO2). I have no issue with growing things like Cabomba although it gets a
bit "leggy". I think I'd need more light and maybe some CO2 to really get it
to thicken up.

Have you checked if you have enough Iron in the water? Are you feeding the
plants regularly enough? Have you tried some root tab fertilizer? Only other
thing might be a lack of light. Although you have 80W, what kind of bulbs
are they & how old are they? Although they still work the effectiveness of
most fluorescents decreases over time to the point that you should replace
them at least once a year.

One cheap option to increase the lighting on your tank is to buy some
reflectors - about £7 each I seem to remember . Made a niticeable difference
to both my tanks.

Only other option I can think of would be that if you were a bit rough with
it when you pushed it into the sand you might have crushed the bottoms of
the stems in which case they would rot. If you are having trouble anchoring
it try some plant weights.

I.