[Richelle]

Hello,
I am writing to you requesting information about fertilizer for Anubias.

I just received the task to setting up the growth section and sales section for aquatic plants in my store. Since our speciality is african cichlids, we found that the only plant that has a chance of survival in such a high Ph and with such hungry fish is the Anubias race plants.

We have had anubias for many years now but only recently did I decide to open a more long term aquarium to make them grow. (before it was mainly in & out). I consider myself to be pretty new at this.

I found that most plants require a lot of fertilizer but I understand that it's not all plants that have the same needs in minerals, carbon etc.

Here is what I am planning to use for fertilizer:

- Seachem Flourish Iron (with seachem multi-test iron to test it)
- Seachem Flourish Potassium : for stronger rizomes and leaves. I found that over time they tend to get brown, and sometimes rot.
- Seachem Flourish Excel : Since I will not be using gas CO2, I will compensate with this
- Seachem Flourish plant supplement : Minerals!!!

To keep my nitrates & phosphates up, there will be fish in the store tank and the "breeder" tank will have it's water changed with water from my fish tanks.

Here are my questions :
- What do you think about these products? do you use them?
- Since all plants don't have the same needs as others, would you use more/less for strictly anubias?
- Would you advice against one of these products for anubias? Suggest another that would be better?
- Am I missing anything?
- What do you think?

Thank you for your time

 

[Richelle]

Also, if you have any scientific sources that could help me out, I would appreciate it a lot!
Thank you!

 

[Tugg]

Anubias is an exceptionally slow grower. Fish waist should cover its needs.

 

[AaronT]

You won't find any iron with the test kit. It is taken up rather rapidly by the plants. Definitely do dose it though. Anubias seem to love extra iron.

 

[Richelle]

Thank you for your replies.
What do you think about the other products. I understand that they are slow growers, but I want to be able to not only make them grow faster, but healthier.

 

[AaronT]

Thank you for your replies.
What do you think about the other products. I understand that they are slow growers, but I want to be able to not only make them grow faster, but healthier.

The other products are good, but the Flourish Potassium is just potassium sulfate added to water. You can easily buy some potassium sulfate and dose it much cheaper. www.aquariumplantfertilizer.com is a good place to buy it.

 

[Rusty]

I think buying dry ferts is just cheaper in general

 

[Richelle]

Thank you for your help
I will look into dry fertilizers. I would rather buy local than online. There are many hydroponic and botanic stores in my area.
Of course I am also biased because I have a store. I like to be able to sell the same products that I use and understand them completely. I will look this up with my suppliers to offer something interesting to my clients with potassium sulfate.

 

[SBS]

Anubias grows very well in soil type substrate with it's roots planted inside but the rhizome above obviously.
Mine is in mineralized topsoil with a bit of red clay mix, no ferts, hard water. It grows really well, below is picture of one. It doesn't want a blazing light over it if you are not combining with taller/fast growers t provide shade.
I've grown anubias with excel and water column fertiliser and for me it didn't work. I ended up with algae infested anubias which I can't stand, had a tank full of them doing just fine before I upgraded to excel and ferts, now almost none left as over time they all looked horrible and I binned the destroyed ones. Obviously it doesn't mean it would happen to everyone but once anubias gets infested with algae, it needs a long time to look decent again.

It's just an option to consider. Here is anubias nana planted in the soil. You can see some roots outside but trust me it has deep roots down in the substrate.

 

[niko]

What SBS said is spot on. Anubias is a very adaptive plant. It prefers to grow emersed - with the roots in substrate. It will do well under water too but it is very prone to getting algae. If you start adding ferts to the water you are guaranteed algae no matter what internet characters tell you. To have both ferts in the water and zero algae you got to jump trough hoops you don't want to know about. It is way better to keep the water as clean as possible and feed the plants through the roots. Good luck keeping the water clean in a cichlid tank. But if you can actually keep it clean, feed through the roots, and increase the light all Anubiases will make 1-2 new fully developed leaves a week. Except that digging cichlids will cause a royal mess if you have rich substrate. Better just bury the roots in the gravel and try to have the cleanest possible water in those cichlid tanks. If you have the Anubias in their own tank than do try rich substrate, clean water, and higher light.


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[SBS]

Even with roots in the gravel will help with the rhizome above as Niko suggested.

I figured they do better like that when I first planted them in an inert sand tank, some on driftwood, some on stones at the bottom but they grew their roots in the substrate and grew way better than the driftwood ones. Eventually I destroyed them all once I started playing with ferts and excel.

I was suggesting the soil only if you want to first grow anubias on a mass scale and then possibly move it to the tank in question when it grows nicely first.

 

[misant777]

Flourish has all of those in it already, well, the iron & potassium anyway. Not the glutaraldehyde. Take a look (ferrous gluconate & potash).

I'm willing to go so far as to say that the claims of Excel being a CO2 substitute are at least partly bull****. What good (if any) it's apt to do is from largely different and more complex things going on.

If you're set on buying Seachem's stuff, why not just go with the Flourish? The Excel is just glutaraldehyde. Period, the end. Nothing special about it.

 

[Richelle]

Thank you for your advice.
I was always told that you shouldn't put anubias roots in the substrate because they will rot.
Perhaps that's because, with african cichlids, you need to use aragonite substrate to keep the Ph up.
Any thoughts?

I've been using the seachem products for a couple of months with good results.
I had many weak rizomes with only a couple of roots on them that started growing back.
As for the algae, I have a team of dedicated Pleco. ancistrus working on that

 

[Tanan]

I will second niko. I have them tied on wood, rock, burried in substrate. Nothing grows better than the one buried in substrate. Even the ones on rock seems to do better once their root reaches substrate. Substrate is Mineralized Soil with some iron clay, argonite and activated carbon capped with river sand.

 

[yunney]

Dry ferts did a great job to thrive the Anubias.

 

[BigJay180]

Dry ferts did a great job to thrive the Anubias.

I think the issue is that in a mostly Anubias tank, if you don't have some fast growing stems or hornwort to eat up all of the excess nutrients, then algae certainly will. Algae is always happy to take up any slack for you in maintenance, water changes, filter cleaning, too many ferts, high lighting, nutrient deficiencies, etc.

Anubias are relatively slow-growing, lower-light plants. They use the dry-dosed water column ferts in my tank, but I shudder to think what the algae would do if I didn't have thick bushes of hortwort, floating wisteria, and big nutrient-hogging swords to take up the NPK.