Anubias Care Guide

Anubias barteri is a West African aroid — the same family as pothos and philodendron — and it grows the way you would expect a jungle aroid to: thick, leathery, dark leaves on a creeping rhizome that grips rock and wood rather than rooting in soil. In the aquarium it grows submersed, emersed, or half in and half out, and its leaves last for years.

The rhizome rule is the same as java fern's and does not need re-explaining here — if you have not met it, the mechanism is covered in detail on the java fern page. What is worth stating plainly is that the consequence is more severe on anubias. Java fern melt is a leaf problem. Anubias rot is a rhizome problem, and it kills.

Two things set it apart from every other low-light epiphyte. It will not reproduce without you cutting it, and it comes in a size range from a three-centimetre "Petite" to a forty-centimetre hastifolia — an enormous scaping range within one genus, and the main reason it turns up in both nano tanks and cichlid tanks.

Rock wool comes off completely before attaching. Fibres trapped against the rhizome hold detritus and moisture against it, which is the same problem as burying it in miniature and a common cause of rot in newly bought plants.

The leaves usually survive the move, which is genuinely different from most nursery plants and worth knowing: if an anubias loses leaves in the first month, that is not a normal conversion melt and the rhizome is worth inspecting.

Low light is not just tolerated, it is preferred. Under an aroid canopy in the wild the plant sees almost no direct sun, and in a tank strong light gives it nothing extra — it cannot photosynthesise fast enough to use it, so the surplus goes to algae on the leaf surface instead.

A shaded position under hardscape or below taller plants is genuinely better than an open one. Anubias is one of the few plants where you should deliberately put it in the darkest part of the tank if the fixture is strong.

The one variety worth treating differently is the variegated stock. Pinto and similar forms have less chlorophyll and are slower again, and they benefit from marginally more light — but they are also more algae-prone for exactly the same reason, so the margin is narrow.

Not needed, and the effect of adding it is smaller here than on nearly any other plant. Anubias is metabolically slow by design; carbon is not what limits it, and injection produces a plant that is still slow.

It sits comfortably in a high-tech tank as a shade planting on hardscape, and the faster-growing plants around it will keep the water clean enough to make the algae problem below more manageable.

It feeds through the leaves, so root tabs are wasted on it. What is unusual is how little it actually needs: leaves that last two or three years represent very little new tissue per month, and a low weekly dose of an all-in-one covers a large plant.

Deficiency is correspondingly rare and slow to appear. Yellowing on anubias is much more often a symptom of rhizome trouble or an ageing leaf reaching the end of a multi-year life than a fertiliser problem, so check the rhizome before you change your dosing.

Overdosing is the more realistic risk in an anubias-heavy tank: nutrients the plants cannot consume stay in the water, and in a bright tank they feed the algae sitting on those long-lived leaves.

It is tolerant across roughly 6.0–7.5 pH and 3–18 dGH, and the hard-water end of that is worth noting — anubias is one of the few plants that does well in African rift lake tanks, where the hardness and alkalinity kill most planting.

Temperature is the one parameter it is fussier about than java fern. It prefers 22–28 °C and does not enjoy the cooler end that java fern shrugs off, so it is a poorer fit for unheated or goldfish-temperature setups even though goldfish themselves cannot damage it.

Water quality matters more than water chemistry. Rot follows poor conditions — high organics, dead spots and detritus collecting around the rhizome — so flow across the plant and a clean tank do more for it than any parameter adjustment.

Anubias is a foreground and midground plant, and that is a direct consequence of the size range rather than a fixed rule. Petite and nana sit at the front on stones and low branches; coffeefolia and glabra work midground; the full barteri and hastifolia are large enough to fill the middle of a big tank on their own.

The thing it does better than anything else here is cover hardscape at eye level. Rigid leaves hold their shape and angle instead of drifting, so a rhizome fixed into a crevice reads as growth out of the rock rather than a plant placed on it — which is why it is the standard choice for hiding a join, a bolt or a bare patch of wood.

In a rift lake or large cichlid tank it is often the only planting that works, glued into rockwork above the substrate line where the fish cannot get leverage on it. In a nano, Petite on a small stone is one of the few epiphytes that stays in scale for years without any trimming.

A new leaf every three to six weeks is normal, and slower in dim water or on a dwarf variety. Individual leaves then last two to three years, which is the longest of any plant on this site and the origin of most of its problems as well as most of its appeal.

Trimming is close to nonexistent. Cut a leaf off at the rhizome when it is genuinely finished — yellow, holed, or so encrusted with algae that it is not worth keeping — and otherwise leave the plant alone. Never trim the rhizome itself for tidiness; every cut is a rot entry point.

The real maintenance job is leaf hygiene, not pruning. Wipe accumulated detritus off the leaf surfaces during water changes and keep flow moving across the plant, because a big flat rigid leaf in a dead spot collects debris that a moving leaf would shed.

Do not move it. A settled anubias that is quietly growing should be left where it is; the most common route to a dead plant is repeatedly detaching and reattaching it while rescaping.

This is the clearest practical difference between anubias and the other epiphytes here: it does not propagate itself. There are no plantlets on the leaves, no runners, no fragments that take root. A single anubias left alone for five years is still a single anubias, just a larger one.

The only route to more plants is cutting the rhizome, which means propagation is a deliberate act with a real risk attached — every cut is an open wound on the exact tissue that is prone to rot. That risk is the reason the plant stays expensive: nurseries cannot mass-produce it any faster than you can.

It also flowers underwater, and while the white spathe is not a propagation route in the aquarium — pollination needs air — it is the thing keepers most often write in about. It is a normal sign of a settled plant.

Anubias has a harder algae problem than java fern, and the reason is arithmetic rather than biology. Java fern replaces a leaf every few weeks; anubias holds the same leaf for two or three years. Every surface on the plant is therefore older, more stable and more thoroughly colonised than anything on a faster epiphyte, and green spot algae on anubias leaves is close to universal in a bright tank.

The leaf structure changes what that looks like. Java fern's thin leaves let algae work into the tissue and go soft under it; the anubias cuticle is thick and waxy, so algae sits on the surface as a hard, distinct crust. That is better and worse at once — the plant is not being damaged, but the algae is visible, sharp-edged and does not wipe off with a thumb.

Because the leaf cannot be replaced by waiting, the advice that works on faster plants does not apply. There is no growing out of it. The three interventions that do work are physical: shade the plant deliberately, put nerite snails on it — the waxy surface takes a nerite's rasping without damage in a way softer leaves do not — and remove terminal leaves at the rhizome rather than scrubbing them.

The prevention worth taking seriously is placement. An anubias positioned in the shadow of hardscape from day one will still be clean in three years; the same plant in open light under a strong fixture will be crusted within one, and by then the affected leaves are the plant's entire body of growth.

Anubias barteri grows along shaded streams and rivers in the West African rainforest, gripping rock, tree roots and fallen wood right at the waterline — often with the rhizome above water and the leaves in humid air, and submerging entirely only when the river rises.

That amphibious position explains the leaf. A leaf that has to work both underwater and in air, and survive both, ends up thick, rigid and coated in a waxy cuticle to stop water loss when exposed. The toughness that makes anubias cichlid-proof in a tank is a drought adaptation, not a defence against being eaten.

The deep forest shade explains the light preference and, indirectly, the growth rate. A plant that photosynthesises under a closed canopy has no reason to grow quickly, and a leaf that takes that long to build is worth keeping for years — which is precisely the trait that makes it an algae magnet under an aquarium LED it never evolved for.

Being an aroid explains the rest. It is a relative of the peace lily and the philodendron, which is why it flowers with a spathe and spadix, why the rhizome creeps along surfaces rather than descending into soil, and why that rhizome needs open air or open water around it to stay healthy.