My anubias keep dying in my tropical tank :-(

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miss.lottie

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Nov 4, 2016
Messages
10
Location
Australia
I've recently set up 55L tropical tank for a betta and a juvenile clown pleco and tried to keep pieces of anubias driftwood in it, but so far each one I've added has died.
The first piece I added (which was a mail-order) seemed to do fine for a week or more, but then the trouble started after I added a second smaller piece from the same online seller. Suddenly the leaves on both pieces began to turn yellow, brown and clear with melted stems and when I tried removing the affected leaves, the rhizome on the smaller piece began to rot and the wood began to grow what looked like a fungus. Thinking that the rot had been caused by being in the mail, I tossed out both pieces, treated the tank with Pimafix and bought another anubias-planted driftwood from my local petshop (making certain to quarantine it in a bucket of Pimafix, Blue Planet Paracide and a bit of salt before adding it to the tank along with bi-weekly doses of Flourish. This time some of the leaves began to turn clear almost immediately and after a while some began to turn yellow and brown-tipped with melted stems and some of the roots are turning yellow too. Why does this keep happening? I've kept a piece of anubias driftwood in my 120L ironsand goldfish-tank for a year now with no problems, and it's only the tropical tank that seems to have these problems. Could it be that the one baby pleco and betta aren't producing enough carbon/waste for anubias to thrive? There have been lots of white patches showing up on the black gravel that I'm thinking might be fungus, but so far the fish have shown no sign of a fungal infection.

The tank is a 55L Aquanano 40 with an LED light, heater (set at 26 degrees celsius), 40cm LED light, quartz gravel and no bubbler or carbon supplement system. Water ph is 6.6 and ammonia and nitrates are zero.
 
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You may have answered your own question at the end there, nitrates are 0, this means there is no ferts for the plant at all in the water. I would go abit longer between water changes and maybe even add some seachem flourish 1-2 times a week and see if it perks up abit.

Try to keep the nitrates around the 10-20 mark
 
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