Dirted Aquarium Help

I am not sure if I am doing this correctly because I am a newbie here! I have finally switched over to dirt after losing my plants in a all gravel substrate. I have had dirt in my aquarium for about 31/2 weeks. I was wondering if I should be worried that my water is still brownish and I do water changes and it does nothing. I have a blue background and it looks brownish green. The plants seem to be doing great, I have rotala rotundfolia that seems to be having new growth, I have a red tiger lotus bulb that has sprouted, I have an amazon sword that continuously had new leaves but has seemed to stop (and the leaves have brown veins), I have jungle val that died off but I think its starting to come back, and I have java fern and anubias nana that dont seem to be growing. I was wondering most importantly when will the dirt start to stop leeching tanins or whatever is going on? Have I done something wrong?

Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Anthony Piti on September 11, 2014 at 1:16am

Dirt will leach tannins into the water pretty much for the entire ice of the tank. It's due to the breakdown of the organics in the dirt but it's worse during the first month. Keep up with the water changes, that certainly helps. Putting carbon in your filter will also help remove the tea color from the water but if you plan to dose any liquid ferts those will also be removed.

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Permalink Reply by LED on September 12, 2014 at 12:12pm

plants will start to slow down on leaf production for many reasons. Ill list a few common reasons:

too little CO2 in the water column

not enough light

not enough nutrients ( one or more)

not enough water flow

too much water flow

pH level

water hardness too high or too low

etc

there are many reasons plants can stop growing. Dont assume if you modify one that they will start to grow immediately. Sometimes there are more than one reason the plants arent growing.

your best bet is to increase the CO2 level since most planted tanks are limited by CO2 availability.