[tpafou]

I have a hard brown layer of something on my Anubias leaves and it cannot be scraped off. It now seems that all the leaves are being affected.

A while back I changed the charcoal and i thought that it was it was that residue even though i cleaned the charcoal thoroughly.

Can you please advise what the problem is and if i need to trim the plant and cut off all the affected leaves?

 

[Preeths]

You can gently clean the leaves under running water under a faucet. Reducing the lights will also help.

 

[tpafou]

Thanks for the assistance Preeths, it is fairly hard. if i cut the leaves off would it not encourage new leave growth?

 

[vanostav61]

I get that too, here is what you need to do:
1. Move the plant to a shaded location if possible. I hide my anubias under a huge Amazon sword, anubias is doing just fine in low light.
2. When algae builds up like this, prepare a mix of 20 parts water to 1 part bleach (20:1). Take the Anubias out and soack it for no more than 3 minutes, then rinse the plant througly with clean tap water and put it back in the tank. Add few drops of dechlorinator to the tank just to be safe. The algae will die off in few days.

This is what I do.