plants dying

Question
i have a 55 gallon tank all my parameters are fine a except my gh which ive been told not to worry too much about i have 2 external filters which are tetratec 1200 /3 clown loaches/5 botia striata /4 silver sharks /4 pictus catfish /6 cory,s /
i now have no plants in my tank and do wish to have some but they all die off i have just bought 18 kilo,s of Eco compete and ferropol fertilizer my lighting is T8 3 tubes so thats fine i don't use co2 i have one spray that agitates the surface water im at a loss of why my plants keep dying off can u help and suggest what sort of plants i should have many thanks in advance

Answer
Seems like you have a nice setup there so far :)

Ok i'll take you through a crash course what plants need first off..

Lighting - there are low/medium/high light tanks... most plants do ok with medium so what you should aim for is around 2.4 wpg (watts per gallon) in your 55 gallon you should be running around 130 watts of 6700k lighting.. That's probably your first problem

Co2 - plants are made from carbon... hence carbon dioxide... it's just somthing plants need to continuously grow and be healthy, try a DIY setup from nutrifin... that will definately help ALOT

fertilizers - There are lots of different fertz taht you can can buy at the stores.. these are mostly MICRO nutrients... what lots of people dont know is there are MACRO nutrients that you cant really find in the store which is why you have to outsource them from private guys... this is the EI (estimated index) method.

those are the three things you need to be successfull.. i could write pages and pages and pages to you but i think you just need to read up on keeping plants.

An excellent forum you should read into is fishforums.net it's most a uk based forum but i use it and i'm from canada nd it's where i've learnt TONS about aquariums and plants ETC.

Join that forum and go to the plants and planted tanks section and read all the pinned articles about co2,lighting,fertz... you'll be glad you did it will give you a little bit more in depth understanding of plants..


But in the meantime keep some plants such as java moss and java ferns... some vals, all those should do good even though your not up to par with your other params :0