# Ancistrus plecos eating anubias?



## sleepy.nadia (Jul 1, 2011)

Hello,

I have been having a problem with all of my anubias plants slowly dying. More recently, I've had rhizomes just disintegrating rapidly, where every three or four days I have to clean the tank of large, softball sized clumps of leaves. Everything is melting. The leaves will be intact and beautiful, but the stems detach at the base of the rhizome, which has gone mushy. 

I assumed it was something like rhizome rot, or even something I am doing funny (I only use ambient light, a lot of these plants were floating because I liked how it looked, so maybe they didn't like this environment). But yesterday I saw one of my baby ancistrus plecos sucking on a floating rhizome. I looked at it, and it was going mushy, as many of them have been lately, but there was also a raw white patch where the pleco had been chomping away. I looked around and realized that they had finished eating the last little bits of driftwood I left for them, so I put in a new log, thinking that might be it. But today I noticed this happening again on a rhizome that had seemed healthy just yesterday. But they do not seem to be sucking too much at the healthy, planted rhizomes, only as much as it takes to anchor onto one, I think. My question is, is it possible that they are KILLING the anubias, or do you think they are just incidentally damaging the already dying, mushy plants? I have never heard of plecos eating anubias, but maybe it was because they needed some fiber because they did not have wood.

I would appreciate any input you guys have! So far I have lost two large petites, a couple of small golds, a ton of nana, and most sadly, multiple big beautiful coffeefolia plants I had 

Nadia


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## bsmith (Dec 13, 2006)

Your ancistrus are deffinatly not eating or killing your anubis. I don't think any animals will eat them as far as I know. Most likely the plecos are just munching on the critters we can't see that are thriving on the rotting plant matter. 

Now why your Anubis is diying is strange. From what your describing it sounds as if you have buried the rhizomes. But you said they were just floating. Now if you took them from floating and buried the rhizome in the substrate to keep them down that would be the reason they are diying. You need to bury only the tootsie simply attach the plant to whatever you want in the tank.


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## sleepy.nadia (Jul 1, 2011)

Nope, all the plants were floating. I planted them after this started, thinking that maybe it would make them stop dying, and I was very careful not to bury the rhizomes. Could it be not enough light? I think I saw Gordonrichards post once that his melted once when he floated them and there was no light. They were floating around in clumps so maybe the ones in the middle died from lack of light. This doesn't sound typical of anubias though.

I think it must have been rhizome rot, because after it started, even the healthy looking ones fell apart. Luckily I had taken all of the rarer anubias out of that tank before this happened, so they didn't die....


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## bsmith (Dec 13, 2006)

If they were getting literally no light I may buy it but Anubis are pretty tough plants. 

I made an observation a few years ago pertaining to Anubis and a strange loss of leaves. I took an older plant that I had in a low tech low light tank that I moved to my high tech high light tank and within a week or so all the leaves fell off. The rhizome was just fine an within a month or two it had a bunch of new leaves that were beautiful but actually smaller than when in the low light tank. 

So was there a change in lighting intensities and if so how much?


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## sleepy.nadia (Jul 1, 2011)

No, I have been using ambient light this whole time. And some of these died like two months after being put in the tank. And the rhizomes were destroyed, while the leaves were still perfect (though floating around unattached to any rhizome).

The reason I took all of the rare anubias out was because they were showing nutrient deficiency <http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/fertilizing/81929-anubias-dying-what-ferts-use.html#post617283>, so I put them in an emersed setup with higher light (put the tank in front of the window) and high ferts where they began to recover nicely, but I left all the healthy looking nanas, coffeefolias, petites, and golds floating in the tank. After a couple of weeks (and notably after I put in a new batch of nanas) they all just started completely melting.

I let this go on for a week or so, thinking that it was just nanas dying so maybe the new batch of nanas I got were dried out during shipping or no good - but then all of my coffeefolias started dying too. All of the other plants just completely fell apart within a matter of days. I threw out all of the debris I could, took out all of the rhizomes that still had any life in them but were affected, and put them in another place to prevent any kind of infection from spreading in the tank, if that is what it is. Now, I have planted all of the remaining healthy plants, started dosing ferts fairly regularly, and giving higher light. They have since then been throwing out new roots and look very healthy, so I am hoping the problem is over for now.

But I still am not sure what the problem WAS, so I have no idea if it will happen again! And I have since planted my more expensive anubias and would be REALLY SAD if it ended up being an infection of some sort that I just exposed them to... But they look healthy so far.

Thanks for the input guys!


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## bsmith (Dec 13, 2006)

I have kept Anubis for a long time and very had any leaf loss issues without some cause. Maybe it was shipping stress, if I read your above post correctly. Were the afflicted plants recently sent to you?


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## sleepy.nadia (Jul 1, 2011)

Only the first ones to die. The later ones I had had for months. I think it must be some type of rhizome rot that spread to the other plants. I have read about it online but nobody seems to know much of anything about it. I just want to make sure it didn't sound like something I did to the plants, because I have been kicking myself about it a bit. It was quite a bit of money in plants that died.


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## bsmith (Dec 13, 2006)

Yeah that is very strange and unfortunate. Where do you live and if you dont mind me asking what types of rare Anubis are you keeping?


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## sleepy.nadia (Jul 1, 2011)

I live in Worcester, MA. I don't keep any REALLY rare ones, just RARER than nana and petite. I have barteri, coffeefolia, gabon, gracilis, heterophylla, hastifolia, minima. All of my petite and gold died...


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## bsmith (Dec 13, 2006)

That sucks. I got into this hobby with Anubis and have always loved its rugged simplicity. 

So it sounds like everything is okay now and that you were looking for a cause to why this happened in the first place, right?


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