Anubias Care Confusion

[N0body Of The Goat]

Besides their ease of care reputation, I've further expanded my Anubias collection to tie in with my mainly African riverine fish stocking. However, problems with existing plants makes me concerned that I'm not doing enough for them.

Varieties I've had for a while...
2x A. barteri 1705(?) [used to thrive without any special attention, never been the same since leaving out of water for ~2 hours last summer and lost ~75% of its leaves, yellowing leaves remaining, tiny holes, frayed leaf edges]
4x A. heterophylla [bought in Jan, quickly seemed to suffer leaf melting, now a lot of leaves have yellow and dark brown patches]
3x A. barteri nana "golden"(?) [bought in Jan, by and large doing ok]

New today...
5x A. barteri coffeefolia
5x A. congensis
3x A. ondulatus

Should 3-6 hours a day of direct/indirect sunlight be enough for these plants, or should I be using my T8 lighting for upto 6 hours per day?

Should I be dosing them daily with Easycarbo? If so, should I stick to the standard dose of 1ml per 50l, or a bit less because they are slow growers?

Should I buy a bottle of Seachem Flourish (or similar) to keep them in condition and hopefully revive the sorry looking 1705 and heterophylla?

Would buying a pack of Seachem Flourish Tabs (or similar) be of any use, presuming some of the compound will leach into the tank water, even though these plants will not be directly planted in the substrate?



Thanks for any input, I will try and get some photos soon, feeling like I'm coming down with a cold today.

 

[ian]

i remember this tank...

You should really be dosing some micro ferts IMO. I don't think you need C02 in this tank.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Ian, the heavily planted Rio240 look is a distant memory these days, everything else perished besides the Anubias 1705 by ~15 months ago (with the exception of the two Echodorus rose that are now reduced to a few new leaves coming off the root "stump" and some Java Fern in a very sorry state). The excessive 110W T5HO lighting periods with not enough ferts and carbon, during a period of tight finances put pay to that.

Part of me wonders if the heterophylla's poor current condition is because I placed this on the left side of the Rio240, which does get direct sunlight in the afternoon, but I was not dosing carbon or ferts, creating a bad inbalance?

Perhaps the 1705 has not recovered from the removal from water because it has spent the winter in my 48x12x15, which only gets indirect sunlight in the morning? When it thrived, it got direct sunlight in the 620T and 5x2x2 for a few hours per day.

Micro ferts... This is this Seachem Flourish and alike, yes?

 

[ian]

yes, Flourish would be fine. A bit of sunlight isn't really enought to evoke the use of C02. Your tank lighting will be though.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

OK Cheers Ian, will get some ordered up.