In need of plant and lighting advice

[presto]

At the beginning of this year I decided to buy a 20g aquarium and grow live plants. At first, my plants were growing wild and needed lots of trimming but recently I had a bad hair algae outbreak and removed all my plants and washed them. Ever since then I don't have hair algae but the plants have been rotting at the stem where the leaves meet and I am finding holes in the broad leafs. I have added fertilizer(which works on my other tank) to try to help recover them but I have not seen improvement yet. Has anyone experienced this and can offer advice?  ( I threw in some floating 4 leaf plants that I don't know the name of, that hang an inch of roots from the surface and strangely these are doing very well?)

I also recently bought a 25g tank and have packed it with 8 types of plants but I think I need more lighting so I am building a canopy for the new aquarium. I have a bathroom wall light with 4 light slots and I am thinking of using 4 15w(60W equivalent) daylight energy bulbs. Will this be sufficient to providing enough light for my plants to really take off?

Thanks

[matt]

( I threw in some floating 4 leaf plants that I don't know the name of, that hang an inch of roots from the surface and strangely these are doing very well?)

Could be that the floating plants are blocking too much light for the plants beneath it?

[presto]

Hi Matt,
Thanks for your response.
I thought of the blocked light but the plant rotting(crypticorn wedii and javafern) started a week before I added the floating plants. The new plants have been in the tank for 2 weeks and they have doubled in size.

I thought it was my trumpet snails but I have removed 50 since it started happening and the problem is still there.

[fischkopp]

Crypts need a time to settle in a tank, sometimes it takes 2-3 months until they will start growing well again. They really need stable conditions over everything else, seeing them loosing leaves is a common phenomenon for this group of plants when the water conditions somewhat change.

Javaferns should be pretty hardy though. Make sure their rhizome is not buried, this will cause it to rot. It is best attached to wood or rocks.

Both are low light plants, so i wouldnt worry too much about floating plants. They probably help in nutrients uptake (algae prevention) as they are fast growers.

But leave all the MTS in the tank! They will NOT harm your plants but help cleaning up the rotten parts.