plant growth problem

I have had my tank for a while now at least a month and i noticed that my amazon swords were growing like crazy and now theyy have taken over the background of my tank . The problem is i am noticing that there color is fading and also there leaves look like they are being eaten, is there a possibility that my fishare eating the leaves or the snails in my tank. i have two haraquin rasboras' 5 male guppies, tree females ans over 16 babbie guppies, also the snails are ram horn snails. Another thing that i have noticed is that my java fern that i planted on my driftwood now is covered by a green moose or algea, is there any way to get rid of this. any help would be greatly apreciated i will post picks ASAP ps my water perameters are 0 amonia, 0 nitrite, 0nitrate, 7.0 ph and 25degrees

thank you :)

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Comment by LED on November 17, 2012 at 3:59am: well there you go, 0 nitrate is an indicator, i assume you have a gravel substrate and you are not using aquarium plant fertilizers If you are using substrate only, then that means your amazon used up all the nutrients in the water column and is now going to die due to lack of "plant food". color fading is commonly due to lack of nitrate. Holes and plants looking like they're eaten away is potassium and phosphate deficiencies. Time to get some plant food. as an emergency method that i've used before but is not as good as using ferts, I've used dirt in a very fine mesh nylon filter bag. Get a cup full of top soil and put it in the bag and sit it in a part of the tank that will get some flow to help distribute nutrients in to the water column. AS IVE said before it would be best to get some ferts to help instead of using dirt.

If you are using dirt under your substrate (which i doubt due to the nitrate level being zero) then it seems your dirt is not supplying enough nutrients to your amazon. maybe you should start using ferts

As for the java fern, its a slow grower and is always a target for algae to grow on its leaves. you can manually clean the leaves with a soft cloth or something similar, if you have enough leaves you can also trim the leaves with algae on it. If your plants have green spot algae on their leaves that is a CLEAR sign of phosphate deficiency.

Comment by ŦůRbö ۰ Ҏяѻ ۰ on November 18, 2012 at 5:04pm: Yeah what he said. lol. the swords will drian the "food" out of the tank pretty fast. (they are like a fat kid returning home from fat camp.) Im hoping that 25 degrees is Celsius and not Fahrenheit; because a frozen tank will prohibit plant growth, or so I heard.