Plants browning

Hey everyone, so I built my first tank about 3 weeks ago, 10G with dirt, gravel cap, a 75watt grow light (from walmart). Anyways, I bought a few plants to put into the tank while it cycled, large sword, small sword and a couple other small plants. Its been about 3 weeks now and the plants are starting to look a bit rough, they looked green and lush when I bought them. For example the small sword I actually thought had died, but I started seeing a little bit of new growth, so i trimmed all the bad/old leaves to give the new ones a chance to grow, but to be honest its been about a week now and I haven't noticed it growing really at all. As for the large sword, the leaves are all getting a brown/dead look around all the leaves, I trimmed most of them to speed up the new growth but even the newest growth look bad coming out of the shoot. I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on my situation, maybe shoot some tips/advice my way?

I will post a few pictures, give you a better idea as to what I mean. Thanks

Lewie

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Permalink Reply by Lewie on February 29, 2012 at 4:55pm

Bump.

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Permalink Reply by GSP on February 29, 2012 at 8:27pm

Can you tell us more about your lighting?

Your methods of trimming seem sound, it's a waiting game.

Also it looks like your gravel cap are quite large pebbles so you will be fighting with tannins, and excess nutrients from the dirt.

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Permalink Reply by Lewie on February 29, 2012 at 8:45pm

My lighting is on 12hr/day. Like I mentioned above its a 75watt grow light from walmart, that pretty much is my lighting situation. As far as tannins go, I actually have a piece of drift wood that I intentionally put in without boiling. I kind of like the more natural look of the water. Do you think that the tannins would actually cause the plants to brown/die around the edges like that? There could still definetly be some excess nutrients in the water, I basically put in 1.5in. dirt, covered with a thin layer of sand then capped with the gravel. I didn't know that the excess nutrients would actually harm the plants. So if I continue every other day water changes, will the excess nutrients eventually settle out?

Thanks

Lewie

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Permalink Reply by GSP on February 29, 2012 at 9:07pm

What type of lighting is it? Wattage means only how much electricity is used. Not necessarily translating to how much plant usable light its giving. So, what type of bulb is it, and what spectrum of bulb is it? (measured in K)

No tannins wont hurt the plants much at all, just reduce lighting effect and visibility.

I bet much of your tannins are coming from the dirt too though.

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Permalink Reply by Lewie on February 29, 2012 at 9:31pm

From what I can tell on the bulb, it say F17T8/GL, 7800K. I assume GL stands for Grow Light, F stands for fluorescent, 17 must be watts used. From what I have learned T8 must be a model type.