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re: anubias turning yellow


>From: Don Hutton/Omnipoint <dhutton at omnipoint_com>
>Date: 13 Jan 97  8:39:29 
>
>My plant tank has been set up for roughly 7 weeks.  All the bunch plants
and 
>swords are doing well.  However, despite the fact that they are growing
new 
>leaves (two have also produced flower stalks), the anubias leaves are
turning 
>yellow. The new leaves are also quite yellow, and don't appear to be
turning 
>green.
[cut]
>Nitrates and phosphates are undetectable 
>in the tank and I wonder if the anubias are suffering from a lack of
nitrogen. 
>There is a fairly large fish population and I feed well so my assumption
is 
>that the hygro and other fast growing plants are consuming all the ammonia
etc. >that is produced.
>
>Is this normal for emersed grown anubias, or is it possible that the lack
of 
>nitrogen is responsible?  If it is a lack of nitrogen, what would be an 
>effective method to increase the level?  I skipped the water change this
week 
>to see if the nitrate level would increase a little.

I've had my anubias turn yellow and subsequently melt, releasing a huge
amount of phosphates into the water.  I can't tell you exactly what it was,
but I can tell you all that I did that stopped the melting.

The anubias melt and phosphate release turned my tank into a cyanobacteria
heaven, so I decided to pull a PMDD-ish trick and start adding more
nitrogen to the tank to provide a known limitation to the plants.  At the
same time, my snails had paper-thin shells and weren't able to reproduce,
so I decided to help them out as well.

I went to a feed and seed store and picked up a 5 lb. bag of ammonium
sulphate, plus a half pound of crushed limestone.  I've been adding about
1/8 teaspoon of ammonium sulphate to my half-full 55g tank daily, and about
1/4 teaspoon of powdered limestone on a weekly basis.

The snails are reproducing like mad now, and the plants are all perking up,
growing up out of the water.  The anubias (emersed) has stopped melting and
is now flowering and putting out huge leaves either weekly or twice weekly.
The cyanobacteria is nearly gone as well.  I'll post my photo documentary
from this tank in a few weeks when I'm done writing it all up.

I don't know if it was the nitrogen, the calcium or magnesium, or a
combination that caused my anubias to recover, but it has definitely
recovered.

David W. Webb           Corporate Business Systems
Texas Instruments Inc.  Dallas, TX USA
(972) 575-3443 (voice)  MSGID:       DAWB
(972) 575-4853 (fax)    Internet:    dwebb at ti_com
(972) 581-2380 (pager)  Text Pager:  dwebb at ti_com Subj:PAGE