I have a 7 gallon tank with two plants (yes I know its rather sad) the plants are Afzeli Anubias and Echinodorus palaefolius var. latifolius. I have had the plants since around the first week of January 2003. The echinofdorus has grown alot but the anubias has only grown two new leaves and they were rather small.
The light on the tank is 14 watts, its a bowfront. Now for my questions.
1.) What should I be dosing the tank with and how much?
2.) How can I remove the brownish looking algae off the leafs?
3.) If I wanted to introduce co2 to the system, how can I stop the ph from crashing?
4.) What would be some other plants that I could add?
You are running 2/1 light to water, which is a good ratio. But in a tank your size the plants are very close to the light which, IMO increases the amount of light on them because of their proximity to the tube. The anubias are naturally slow growers, and all have a tendency to grow algae on their leaves. Swords also will, in time develope algae unless you start fertilizing. If you don't want to add more ground plants my suggestion is that you pick up some salvinia, or riccia, or something else that will float to shade your plants to some degree. Many floating plants are also wonderful nutrient eaters, and do a good job of competing with algae for excess nutrients. You can gently rub the algae off the anubia leaves with your fingers. It's a lot easier to remove when new than after growing on them for a while.
Before anyone gives you any directions as to CO2(which also will help with growth and control of algae) they are probably going to ask you the numbers of the following: pH, gH, kH. If you have reasonable water hardness(gH & kH) you'll get all kinds of suggestions for CO2 application. But your tank is so small that I personally wouldn't recommend anything without knowing the above parameters.
If you don't do it already, a 30% water change weekly will help your situation, not only with the algae by cleaning the water table, but also will add back used up trace elements that plants need to grow well.
As to fertilization.....go to the "search" button at the upper right corner of the screen and type in fertilization or nutrients, and read everything written by Tom Barr(Plantbrain). You'll find answers to all those questions there, and he knows his stuff on that subject.
And keep asking questions. That's how we all learned.
Len
Fish? What kind, and how many?
Len