As with any aquarium problem, it always helps us to know your water parameters, and additionally whenever possible, your maintenance regimen. Many plants do best within a certain pH range, or within a certain hardness range. Most will fail when enough excess food is allowed to accumulate in the substrate to the point where putrefaction starts in, creating black gravel and noxious gases between the roots when insufficient gravel vacuuming is performed -- when overfeeding.
Getting to the gist of this problem though, it would certainly help us if we knew what types of plants you bought, as some do well in low light, some require medium lighting and yet others need even stronger lighting. Even the least demanding low-light plants require a minimum of at least 1 Watt per gallon, preferably even 1.5 Watts per gallon or slightly better. Medium light plants need a minimum of about 2 Watts per gallon and up to around 3 Watts per gallon. The 15 Watt lighting you're using on your 70 Liter (18.5 U.S. Gallon) tank is barely giving the minimum requirement even for low-light plants, when giving 0.81 Watts per gallon.
As most of your plants were doing well at the start back in February, I suspect a good part of their success may have been due to receiving increasing ambient lighting in the room as Spring and Summer progressed, or even indirect (or some direct) sunlight with a window exposure. As the days are now getting shorter again, they are no longer receiving this added benefit, while even the ambient lighting is decreasing.
I have to assume that the fine leaved plants you mentioned as not doing well for you, not even for a week, were most probably one of the bunch plants such as Cabomba, Myriophyllum or Ambulia, etc. which, while allowing to be planted as a close-knit group for best effect, should never be planted as a tied bunch as they come from the store. Instead, while the stems may be planted in proximity to each other, the individual stems of these bunch plants should always be planted separately about 3/4" -- 1" apart to allow the lighting to reach the bottom inner-most stems of the bunch. Without the plants getting enough light at their base, the stems very quickly lose their leaves, as the bottom portions die out and rot.
As your broad leaf plants did well, I could assume they may have been a species of Anubias, as they're a low-light-requiring plant. Still, they do need more light than what you're giving them. You don't give any dimension of your tank, and even the one most important dimension of height would also help us towards diagnosing your problem, as a tall tank requires even greater wattage in lighting illumination, since the most beneficial light rays are absorbed by deeper water. Ray
--- In tropicalfishclub@yahoogroups.com, "suemfrancis" <peterelectrician@...> wrote:
>
> Help needed - In my 70 litre tank set up in February I had, up until now, been quite successful with my plants. I very quickly learned that any plant with very fine leaves didnt last a week, but I was having a lot of success with broader leafed plants and three different varieties that grew so much they made a canopy over the top of the tank (sorry dont know species but quite small leaves giving out root like strands from the stem.
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> For a quite a few weeks now the plants have been dying - I now have lost all the plants that reached the top of the tank, just shedding leaves. Some new ones I bought last week are just shedding leaves and there will be nothing left in a few days. A quite densly planted tank now looks quite bear.
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> I increased the light from 6 hours a day to 8 hours to no avail.
> There does seem to be a slight 'cotton wool' matter around some.
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> I do have a guppy and 2 shrimps but I dont think that the degree the plants are going is down to them.
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> The tank has a Sunglo 46cm 15W T8 lamp.
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> Any help would be much appreciated
>
>
> Sue Francis
> Coulsdon, Surrey, England
>
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