Anubias issue

[satt71]

Hi

I had some 15 bunches on Anubias(diff varieties) on driftwood in my 180g tank along with my discus. I saw that they were growing balck algae on them. I use to scrub them with my hands earlier and then looking at the forum, dropped in the florish Excel for the last 2 weeks as said in the usage. Now all my plants have leaves that are yellow spotted and the it looks bad.

Anyone know why this has happened, any way to bring it back greens. Also appreciate if someone lets me know how I can fix the algae problem.

I am not a plant guy, so please help.

[kush]

One of a couple of things may have happened - you may have damaged the leaves through over-zealous rubbing or you may simply have a trace element deficiency.

Clean the plants up as best you can. Swish them in a solution of 20:1 bleach and then for a few minutes in a water bucket with de-chlorinator at 10x normal dosage. Cut the damaged leaves off, as they will not repair themselves, and make sure you don't bury the rhizome when you put the plants back in the tank.

I don't know what your water situation is but, looking at the photos in some of your older posts, I'm guessing that you're doing frequent water changes. Anubias is an incredibly slow-growing plant so you normally wouldn't want to add any ferts - they should be getting sufficient trace elements from your water changes. What I'd recommend is getting a Fe test kit and then gradually dosing your tank at each water change with just enough iron supplement to get the very faintest of pink blushes on the test.

Hope that helps.

[KeonTheKing]

if you dont have any flat bodies fish ( discus) i would tell you to buy some ottoclonus catfish they make your plants sparkly clean. and even if you do have discus you can put the otos in as cleaners for a day then remove ( yes they work very fast) and thats what i do ._.

[krazykat]

Otos are very hard to catch, especially in a large tank. Just my experience. Had one that liked to attach itself to my discus and couldn't catch it at all.

[Harriett]

Because anubius are tough leaved plants with a lonnnnger than average life to the leaves, we tend to see more algae build up on them--it does sound like your tank has not yet hit what we fondly call 'the sweet spot' in terms of balancing light, CO2, and nutrients. In this situation, I think rather than worrying about the algae on the particular plant, you might research in general getting the tank more balanced. That is a much larger conversation and I would suggest spending time either in the planted tank section here or some of the planted tank websites to get some ed-u-ma-ca-shon on fine turning--it might help. Even in a balanced tank, however, I always have better luck if I tuck the anubius away from the more directly lighted areas--they look better and last longer that way. In my tanks, I put them under the middle brace of the tank, which dulls the light down--that works pretty well.
Even after many years of messing around with planted tanks, for me it is still always a tank by tank challenge to get it right and maintain that---I guess that's one of the reasons I enjoy it so much--I am a tinkerer by nature! LOL
Hope this helps a little.
Best regards,
Harriett