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What is this on my plants leaves? Is it algae or nutrient deficiency?

Lewissss

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12 Dec 2021
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Location
England
What is this? I add root tabs
 

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Hi
Its algae.
In order to get useful advice how to deal with it please provide more details on your system (tank size,filter,lights and photoperiod,CO2 yes no ,inhabitants and feeding regime.....) and maintenance routine (ferts, waterchanges .......)
and few full tank shots
Regards Konstantin
 
Are these newly added plants? A lot of the unhealthy leaves look like they're in the emerged form (grown above water) and are of little use to the plant. Once they're submerged in water the leaf form will change and adapt to its new conditions, which you can see in some of the new growth.

Basically a lot of the old leaves are dying and attracting various types of algae.

Like @Konsa suggests, more details about the set up would be helpful 😀
 
It’s a Juwel 180 with its bio flow 3.0, I have the lights on for 8 hours, 12-8, no co2, I have an angel, 2 Bristlenoses, rainbow shark, 2 platys, 5 danios and 2 blue rams, feed them once a day, every couple of days I’ll throw in some courgette for the pelcos then remove it within 24 hours. I don’t add fertilisers but most of my plants are root feeders so I add root tabs for them. I do a weekly water change of 25%.
 
Are these newly added plants? A lot of the unhealthy leaves look like they're in the emerged form (grown above water) and are of little use to the plant. Once they're submerged in water the leaf form will change and adapt to its new conditions, which you can see in some of the new growth.

Basically a lot of the old leaves are dying and attracting various types of algae.

Like @Konsa suggests, more details about the set up would be helpful 😀
They’ve all been in there around 2 months, it seems to be the new leaves are effected more
 
Hi Lewissss, even though most, but hopefully not all the plants have their roots in the substrate they'll still benefit from some level of fertiliser in the water, the ones that don't (looks like anubias and java fern?) definitely need water column feeding. I'd suggest you start adding at least some fertiliser, ideally a "complete one" that contains Npk and trace nutrients.

Your tank is fairly young so suspect some of that brown covering on the plants back right and left is diatoms, this should pass in time.
The leaves that are rotting and attracting algae need removing, you can do this by pinching them off with your thumb nail, get them as close to the substrate as possible.

Hope that helps a bit and I'm sure others will chime in.

Nice looking piece of wood BTW.
 
Thanks! Yep youre right it’s a Java Fern and Anubias, their rhizome are not buried though, what fertiliser do you recommend? I’m a bit of a newbie with planted tanks. How often should I dose it too?
Yes it still fairly new, should I remove the leaves with diatoms on or let it pass?
Ok I’ll remove them, how do I stop it from coming back or spreading though?
Thank you!
 
Tnc complete usually gets the thumbs up. Just follow the dosing instructions on the bottle to start with.

The diatoms might wipe off, try gently rubbing the leaf between your fingers, if it does come off then do a water change once you've finished cleaning the leaves.

How do you get rid of diatoms... Time unfortunately, the tank needs to settle and mature a bit. Do you have any floating plants? Adding some of those might help speed up the process. How do you feel about snails? Some varieties will eat the diatoms.
 
Tnc complete usually gets the thumbs up. Just follow the dosing instructions on the bottle to start with.

The diatoms might wipe off, try gently rubbing the leaf between your fingers, if it does come off then do a water change once you've finished cleaning the leaves.

How do you get rid of diatoms... Time unfortunately, the tank needs to settle and mature a bit. Do you have any floating plants? Adding some of those might help speed up the process. How do you feel about snails? Some varieties will eat the diatoms.
Ok thanks I’ll try that.
I was more asking how I get rid of the black algae growing on the leaves, are they diatoms too? No I don’t have any floating plants, maybe I’ll add a few.
Not too keen on the snails reproducing so much and nerite snails leave their ugly eggs everywhere lol. I was looking into Ottos, would they do the trick with both algaes?
 
Hard to tell what the black algae is tbh from those pictures. Yes ottolincus will eat the diatoms but ideally you need to let your tank mature a bit more in my opinion before adding them, others may disagree with that advice.
 
Are you talking about the dark bits on the edges of these leave?
162B7AC6-6937-4220-BF96-EE5BC3B0556C.jpeg


If so these leaves need removing.

Cheers.
 
Yes like the ones on this, I know I’ll remove them but how do I stop this from spreading or reappearing, anything I can change or do?
AEB5E949-DF32-423C-BDA8-F41D179F48DA.jpeg
 
I think a lot of it is on old emersed growth, those leaves won't survive long underwater.
You need to start adding fertiliser as suggested above and see how the new growth looks. Hopefully things will improve once you start adding the ferts.
 
It’s on the newer leaves not the older ones. I’ve ordered the TNC complete so I’ll try that out. Thanks for the advice
 
See how you get on with the ferts and try to get some floating plants, amazon frogbit is a good place to start. If after a few weeks of doing that you don't start seeing any improvements then you might have to consider lowering the light intensity a bit, hopefully that won't be needed, consider it a plan b.
 
Hi @Lewissss

I also reckon it's BBA (Audouinella). Anubias, in my experience, is notorious for developing BBA on the edges of its leaves. My guess is that the plant leaks nutrients (from the leaf edges) into the water column where the BBA spores are lurking. Chances are that the BBA was introduced into your tank on the plant itself. Did you treat the plants with anything before adding them to your tank?

Some people have had success with the true* Siamese Algae Eater fish but my experience is that these fish rapidly tire of BBA as soon as they are introduced to other fish foods.

Unfortunately, I know of no magic cure for BBA but perhaps others can help you. I seem to recall that @GHNelson may have used an Easy-Life product with some success.

* Crossocheilus Siamensis (if I remember rightly)

JPC
I’ve had black beard algae in a previous tank, this seems different, it’s not fuzzy at all? Are you sure it’s that? It’s not on my Anubias. I got rid of it last time by spot dosing Seachem excel. Nope I didn’t treat the plants before putting them in. Can’t get a Siamese algae eater because of my rainbow shark.
 
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Hi @Lewissss

I'm confused. I can see what looks like BBA growing on some of the disintegrating pale green leaves on the RHS of the bottom photo.

To which photo does your above comment refer?

JPC
Yeah that’s not the anubias, it’s an Lagenandra meeboldii
 
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