# Anubias nana turning yellow!! Help please!



## kilfrg7864

Hi everyone

I've had anubias nana in my tank for a few months, and just recently one of the leaves have started to turn yellow from the tip, and is now spreading to the whole leaf. I dose flourish, and NPK plant grow fertilizers once a week, but am still getting a large amount of green spot algae, as well as continuing to get brown algae. I have about 5wpg over my 6 gallon tank, and am not using any CO2, and I do not have a testing kit. I've heard anubias are really hard to kill, but some how it looks like I'm managing to do just that. Any ideas on why they are turning yellow?

Any help would be great thanks!


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## pminister

I am no expert, but to what i have learned. Anubias is a sloooow growing plant, doesn't really require much for it to grow. Based on the picture, and what you are dosing.

It seems there is way to much of available nutrients, which aren't being used at a quicker rate. Therefore the excess nutrients are causing some algae build up, in your tank as well on your plant leaves.

But when I first got Anubias, the 2-3 leaves did ended up yellow or even deteriorate for a bit. But soon after 2-3 weeks new leaves started to grow out....


Also if you are interested in learning about growing aquatic plants, the more you learn the better grasp you will have on them. And there are great resources online, plus the abundant knowledge that is available on this forum.

Welcome to the green side !


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## mudboots

Another thing I noticed is that I didn't see the rhizome of the plants in the pics. It may just be the pic angle and my ADHD preventing me from noticing, but in the case that you've buried the rhizomes, or they are blocked from light, thet will begin to decay and the rest of the plant soon follows.

Then again, I had lost a few Anubias once that were planted just like they "should" be and I never did figure out what killed them.


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## davemonkey

You have ample light for Anubias and probably more than enough fertilizer unless you have some good nutrient hogs in there. With no CO2, you could lower the light intensity by raising you light a bit which can help with the algae. (You may also consider adjusting your photoperiod. How long are your lights on? 

My first thought was the same as mudboots'. Are the thick rhizomes buried? If so, that is what's killing the plant.

-Dave


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## kilfrg7864

no the rhizomes are not buried, but they are under that wood ornament and are being held down but lead weights, in both of those pictures. But i do not believe that the rhizomes are getting much light because they are under the ornament and in the shade. 

I am using an eclipse 6, and modified to hood to fit 2 15w spiral compact fluorescent lights in there, so i cant really raise the light higher unfortunately. But i leave my lights on for 8 hours a day.

i do dose ferts, but ive added plants to try to suck up the nutrients so that algae doesnt grow, like water sprite, water wisteria, and amazon sword.

The problem i have is my swords are turning brown then yellow then clear yellow, and people were telling me it was a lack of N, or K so i was dosing more, which lead to more algae and im sure you can see where this is going haha.


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## kilfrg7864

just an update the leaf in the 2nd picture is almost completely yellow now and i have no idea why this is happening!!!! please help!


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## Tex Gal

Yellowing is usually a sign of iron deficiency. Why not try adding a little iron and see what happens? Add it every other day according to the bottle and see what happens.


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## brandon429

since this plant is a slow grower, you can easily be dealing with a chronic state of nutrient deficiency (seems to be low iron chlorosis for the yellowing, magnesium is also possible but id agree its Fe) and these ferts you are dosing may not have time to correct it for that round of growth you are seeing. matter of fact I can't recall one single time in ten years that a cholorotic leaf ever corrected itself, it's always the next round you have to check, so expect that leaf to get worse even if you correct your nutrient issue. 

Id look more to your new shoots and make sure they are normal, if so just prune these when they get ready. a little algae isn't terrible, unless your tank is years old I'd consider it normal as it's still balancing relative to what you keep in it and how you feed and clean it. steady states take a while.

also, even though you listed faster growing plants the amount you'd have to have relative to your bioloading and fert addition would have to be astounding to uptake all that business. In other words, even your fast growers aren't dense enough to really scrub the system for you, although they are still fast growing. you should step up water changes imo for a while and use a low dose sustrate fert pellet to keep ferts out of the water column, not the heavy phosphorous ones be sure and check the lable to make sure these major nutrients and balanced by micro ones as well. There are some pellet fertilizers for tanks that are just phos, potassium and nitrate and those are algae farms although they will sprout the heck out of your plants. You can also cheat 99% of this process by using an oversized UV light although most will recommend a natural approach. When I put one on my tank it corrected the problem for me, -then- i learned the natural approach and used it on other tanks.
b


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## brandon429

clarify: the uv sterilizer corrected my algae problem, the chlorosis is still directly related to incorrect iron or magnesium, the two primary green chlorophyll chain linkers in photosynthetic pathways

another thing, it really matters if you grew those leaves yourselves or not to use them as your tests for nutrient assessment. what if these are the originals from the store, shipped stressed and transported and there turns out to be nothing wrong with your water?!?! if your fast growers aren't chlorotic just but back on ferts a little, change water and wait another month


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## armedbiggiet

Tex Gal said:


> Yellowing is usually a sign of iron deficiency. Why not try adding a little iron and see what happens? Add it every other day according to the bottle and see what happens.


Agree with Tex on this one since you did not mention iron it is worth a try although yellowing alot of time is nature ageing and it can corrected by adding K.

And kilfrg7864, your algae proble is clearly too much lights, "5wpg over my 6 gallon tank"... not to mention how short your tank is. Remember that WPG in your case does not really apply cause your tank are just too small.


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## kilfrg7864

armedbiggiet said:


> Agree with Tex on this one since you did not mention iron it is worth a try although yellowing alot of time is nature ageing and it can corrected by adding K.
> 
> And kilfrg7864, your algae proble is clearly too much lights, "5wpg over my 6 gallon tank"... not to mention how short your tank is. Remember that WPG in your case does not really apply cause your tank are just too small.


so too much light, i dont understand what you mean by the WPG rule doesnt apply in my tank, but yet you say it is too much light. How much much should i be having in a small tank like this one? I was thinking of looking for bulbs with less wattage but 15 watts each seems pretty low and finding some less than that with a 6500k spectrum would be hard. I need two of them just because 1 will not light up my whole tank but rather only 1 side.


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## kilfrg7864

Just an update, ive been dosing iron every other day, but the leaf is turning more yellow, and is now beginning to turn transparent around the lead edges..... looking at the other leaves of the plant it seems as if the other leaves are turning yellow as well.


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## fishyerik

You'll probably loose some leaves, but even if you loose all leaves new shoots will grow from the rhizome as long as you:

Give the rhizome some light. Reason: should be obvious.

*Cut down* on water changes. Reason: Brown algae normally comes when one or more of following situations, newly not yet established aquariums, too much water changes, and, not enough light. You're probably capable of working out which of these causes your brown algae. Brown algae need silicon that normally gets reduced in tanks, and levels gets renewed with tap water. If you're not adding biologically available silicon in any other way, which isn't very likely, you're really mostly feeding your brown algae with your water changes. Anubias normally does not like intensive water changing schedules when tap water contains a lot of silicon, if thats because of the silicon itself or a common side effect of it I don't know, but I do know that you should change as little water as possible if you want your Anubias to grow well.

*Don't* dose anything like crazy. Reason: Without very high light and CO2, and with a small amount of plants that's not even doing that well a lot of Iron for example won't be needed, and to get iron deficiency the plant have to grow, and the deficiency will show only or almost only in new growth. Plants can take up micro nutrients for future use, and your plants will probably have enough of any micro nutrient you've been dosing or is present in your tap water for a lot of growth. Exception would be if you've dosed a lot of any single nutrient that blocks the uptake of some other nutrient, which is one of the risks with just shoveling in nutrients and see what happens. Dose a complete and balanced fertilizer, as intended, and let time fix this problem. That plant isn't iron deficient, it's dyeing from excessive water changes with a not so good tap water, or overdosing of singe nutrients or both.

Further on: No, the WPG-rule doesn't apply very well to your tank, it doesn't apply very well anytime important parameters differ greatly, your tank is so small you need a much higher WPG then say even a 15 gallon tank to get the same intensity, compared too a 55 gallon the difference is enormous. The WPG-rule also for example implies use of efficient reflectors that can be hard to achieve in your case. Most of your tank is to be considered low light tank, with the exception for the areas close to the bulbs.


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## lildark185

Interesting take on it fishyerik


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## kilfrg7864

i wish i could cut down on the water changes, but im stuck doing about a 50% change every week because of my fish (dwarf puffers). The brown algae is not hurting anything correct? I guess at least my oto and amano shrimp will never starve haha.


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