Aquarium Plant Problem Checklist
Tick what you see and what has changed. You’ll get possible explanations, ranked by how many of your answers point to them, and the safest checks to do before changing anything.
Possible causes will appear here
This checklist narrows down likely explanations and the safest next checks. It cannot diagnose a plant: several causes look alike.
What this checklist can and can’t do
Many plant problems look alike. Yellow leaves can come from a nutrient shortfall, low light, or a plant adjusting to life underwater, and more than one cause can be at work at once. The checklist doesn’t diagnose your plant. It points to the explanations that fit your answers and the checks that rule things in or out.
Change one thing at a time
Most fixes take a few weeks to show in new growth. Changing light, fertilizer, and CO2 at the same time makes it hard to tell what helped. Test the water first, make one change, and judge it on the leaves that grow afterward. For the bigger picture, see our guides to plant melt and algae troubleshooting.
Other planning tools
- Substrate calculator: Liters and cubic feet of substrate for a flat or sloped bed, with an optional weight estimate from the maker's published density.
- Aquarium volume calculator: Actual water volume from inside dimensions and water height, which is usually less than the size printed on the box.
- Maintenance checklist: A routine tailored to your filter, livestock, CO2, and fertilizers: what to glance at daily, do weekly, and check every few weeks.