Hi Valice, welcome to AQ!
Your plants can survive with a infertile substrate (we refer to substrate as the stuff on the bottom of your tank, be it sand, aquarium gravel, soil, whatever ), as long as you fertilise using liquid fertilisers.
If you do not have CO2, plants will be growing at a much slower rate and therefore you do not need to add fertilisers so often. Once a week should suffice, read the sticky about Non-CO2 tanks at the top of this forum section.
Are the plants new? Plants melt for a variety of reasons. We need more info about your tank to "diagnose" the problem.
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