I Dont Know Whats Going On?!

Question
Hey Nicklfire,

I have had a planted freshwater 30 gallon tank for about 2 months. Fish wise I have:
3 Pristella Tetras
4 Cardinal Tetras
1 Serpea Tetra
1 Panda Cory
1 Bristlenose Pleco
2 German Blue Rams (1 male 1 female) and
1 Catfish of some sort. (It is a light brown with darker brown spots, has a sharp and high top fin, and bristle like whiskers around the mouth).

I have Eco-Complete as a substrate, a piece of driftwood in the middle of the tank, two 20 watt Aqua-Glo bulbs, and an Eclipse hood system (I think it is an Eclipse 3, it has the whole Bio-Wheel deal with a filter and two heads where the water comes out, which agitate the surface of the tank). I also feed the plants a Seachem fert called "Flourish".

The problem of course is with my plants. I am going to try and give you an idea of what's going on. I have an Amazon Sword in the back-left hand corner of the tank (near the filter systems intake thing, just incase that may be a problem.), another kind of sword (which type I am not sure) in the back right-hand corner of the tank, a Java Fern very near but not on the driftwood, and two Wisterias in the front of the tank (one of which has longer leaves, and a less mature one with rather rounder leaves.).

The swords are both looking pretty bad. The sword which name i don't know became very light in color, extremely thin, and got to the point in which it got holes in the leaves and eventually just was left as a skeleton of the plant. It is producing new growth but it eventually gets the same way. The other sword has about the same effects and amount of growth but the decay of it is not nearly as fast. Finally the only other problem is with the Java Fern. It is turning brown, and seems to have little brown fuzzy "stems" under the leaves. Very strange.

What do you think the problem is? I am thinking of moving the fern actually onto the driftwood, would that be a good idea?

OH ALSO! I forgot to mention that the bulbs that were originally in the hood were really old, and the two 20 watt aqua-glo bulbs have only been in for about a week.

Thank you for reading this all :) and i am looking forward to your advice.
Thanks Again,

Brian

Answer
Wow lots of information you provided me so i gotta answer this question i guess eh :) This is going to be short and sweet so listen up.

You have a 30 gallon tank.. good one to start off with, my myself i have a 50 gallon. So lets just get right into it shall we.

what do plants need... Plants need Light (of course) , fertilization ( for food) , and co2 (because plants are made of carbon).

For the swords you have, you should be running about 2.7 (watts per gallon) of lighting so on a 30 gallon you need about 80 watts of lighting. Not just any lighting no.. you need some power compacts 6700k rating.  Ok well why you ask... well you can provide plants with some lighting but  most plants need a specific amount... 2.4-2.7 is about med lighting for a planted tank, and your swords are heavy root feeders.. so right now they are starving for lighting.

That would be my first recommendation to you here'e is the second.

Fertilizers..: I commend you for adding that flourish stuff but your only doing half the job there bud. Flourish is what we call in the fish world as a trace element (micro nutrient), they provide alot of common nutrients such as iron etc etc, but your missing out on the other side of the puzzel called the MACRO nutrients that are not commonly found in trace elements at all.

Basically your feeding your plants one thing only and they are getting deficient in other areas.. and cant grow and... just die. Readup on macro nutrients to see more about (estimated index) <-- that's just a fancy word for making your own fert and adding it to your tank.

Now the last thing i gotta let you know about is CO2. If you dont know much about it.. learn now wisely grasshopper. Co2 is a must have if your going to be in the planted world, plants makeup is co2.. which is why when you get to this point you gotta research what you want to do. You can do a DIY co2 system which you makeup a solution and it feeds your plants with co2 bubbles.. or you can buy a pressurized system with a tank and regulator and solinoid for about 350$ :)

Those are your problems and i'd suggest doing a bit of googleing on the topics i let you know about. IT definately will take some money to get everything going, i suggest adding the co2 first then upgrade lighting.

You can always  catch me at fishaquarium.org (that's my new forum)