White fungus-like dots on anubias making my fish sick

[daizeUK]

The first time I had problems was with an unplanted tank with baby platies. The tank scaled up with white dots similar to the ones I see on my Anubias now. Two weeks later the baby platies started to get sluggish immediately after a water change and some died within 24 hours, the rest recovered when I transferred them back to the parent tank.

More recently I set up the same tank as a holding tank with four adult platies and two amano shrimp while I prepared their new home. This tank contained the Anubias plant in my 2nd & 3rd photos. One platy stayed at the bottom of the tank for a week and then died. A second platy then started to show the same symptoms but quickly recovered when I transferred him to his new home. The shrimp spent their time hiding but this was normal behaviour under the circumstances anyway.

Two weeks later the Anubias in the new tank started to develop scale (the 1st pic) and about the same time the same platy started showing the same symptoms again, hiding motionless at the bottom of the tank. I thought he was done for. The other two platies and recently added threadfin rainbowfish in the tank seemed unaffected. I removed the scaled leaves and did a water change and after another 24 hours the platy was fine again.

I'm pretty baffled. Like I said, maybe it's all unrelated coincidences.

 

[Tim Harrison]

It sounds like there may have been some problem with your supply.
Just out of interest are the parameter readings you gave of the water directly out of the tap or the tank? A comparison would perhaps be a good idea for reference.

 

[daizeUK]

8.3 is the current tank pH in both my tanks (neither co2 injected). Water out of the tap is around 7.6 the last time I checked. 300 mg/L is the water board's reading, I don't have a TDS meter.

 

[RPackman]

Sorry to resurrect a very old thread but thought I would add my observations. I currently have 2 tanks (plus new cycling tank which doesn’t count) and have had this on my anubias in only one of them. It is a nano cube, ultra low tech, minimal maintenance and very infrequent water changes, only topping up evaporation and minimal flow. Other tank is 100L, >10 x flow, low light but fertilisers and liquid carbon, with regular water changes and has not had this. I have realised that my nano tank has slowly become super hard water due to essentially topping up evaporation losses over the last 5 years! I assumed this was the reason for the calcium deposits on the anubias leaves (and the hardscape, filter, heater etc).