Will plants recover from deficiencies?

[swifty]

My anubias has a few pin sized holes in them, and I recently started dosing comprehensive a few days ago to see if that gives enough potassium for them. If not I'm prepared to buy some dry fert or seachem potassium.

Will the leaves full up from the holes or will I have to cut those leaves off in order to grow new ones?

 

[Deftpunk79]

Once the plant is flourishing again, cut off the dead material so that you have a fresh cut on the plant. It should repair the leaf quickly on it's own after that. If the plant isn't healthy, then this is just going to shock it more. If the central stem of the leaf is dead, then the entire leaf past that spot is probably going to die and you should just trim that down no matter what. The same is true if one of the major veins going to the center of the leaf are dead. If the stem and veins are mostly intact, the plant should repair itself once growing conditions are good.

 

[Rivercats]

The pin holes in the damaged leaves will not "fill in" as they can not repair themselves. But new leaves will be fine and not develop the pin holes as long as the nutrient deficiency in the water has been corrected. If the holes are tiny and not too bad looking you can leave them on the rhizome otherwise you can just gently cut or pull them off.

 

[BBradbury]

Plants

Hello swifty...

I have low light tanks, so Anubias is one of my main plants. From my observations, once the leaf is damaged it's best to remove it, so the plant doesn't put energy into an unsightly leaf and can begin the process of growing a replacement.

I check my plants daily and remove any damaged leaves. This way, the plant is stimulated to add new growth and the plant always looks healthy.

B

 

[swifty]

I see, thanks for the responses. It's only 2 leaves out of about 8 that are affected, and they have about 2-3 small pin holes each so I think I'll leave them for now since it's such a slow growing plant until more leaves fill in.

Still new to planted tanks, I just thought since fish repair their fins plants could somehow repair their leaves in the same way. Learning every day!