kilfrg7864

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.

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.

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.