Anubias: Tie It, Glue It, Never Bury the Rhizome

Introduction

If you have ever walked into a fish store and seen a lush, dark-green plant with broad, waxy leaves attached to a piece of driftwood or wedged between rocks, there is a very good chance you were looking at an Anubias. Few aquatic plants have earned the reputation that Anubias has among freshwater hobbyists — and for excellent reason. It grows in low light. It tolerates hard water, soft water, acidic water, and slightly alkaline water. It survives with minimal fertilization, no CO₂ injection, and no fancy substrate. It coexists peacefully with notoriously plant-destroying fish like cichlids and goldfish. And it lives for years, growing slowly but steadily into a showpiece.

For a beginner, Anubias is not just a good choice — it is arguably the single best plant to start with. It forgives nearly every mistake except one, and that one mistake is the focus of this guide: NEVER bury the rhizome in substrate. That single rule, along with a handful of straightforward attachment techniques and care basics, is everything you need to keep Anubias thriving for years.

This guide will walk you through what Anubias actually is, why the rhizome rule matters so deeply, how to attach it correctly using string or glue, what kind of environment it prefers, how to feed it, how to prune it, and what to watch for when things go wrong. By the end, you will have the confidence to buy, place, and maintain this plant like a seasoned aquarist.

What Is Anubias?

Anubias is a genus of semi-aquatic flowering plants in the family Araceae — the same broad plant family that includes peace lilies and philodendrons. They originate from tropical West and Central Africa, where they grow along riverbanks, in streams, and in shaded forest waterways. In their natural habitat, they are often partially submerged, with roots clinging to rocks and wood while leaves break the surface.

There are dozens of recognized species and cultivars in the hobby, but the most commonly available include:

Anubias barteri — the standard workhorse. Broad, oval leaves reaching 6–10 cm. Hardy and adaptable.
Anubias barteri var. nana — the dwarf variety. Smaller leaves (3–5 cm), slower growth, hugely popular for midground and foreground placement.
Anubias barteri var. nana ‘Petite’ — an even smaller cultivar, excellent for nano tanks and detailed aquascaping.
Anubias barteri var. coffeefolia — distinctive corrugated, wavy leaves with a brownish-red tint on new growth.
Anubias hastifolia — tall and narrow, better for background use in larger tanks.
Anubias gigantea — as the name implies, large. Best for tanks of 200 litres and above.
Anubias ‘Snow White’ and other tissue-culture cultivars — bred for unusual coloration, sometimes requiring more light to maintain their appearance.

All of these share the same fundamental care requirements, and all of them have the same non-negotiable rule about their rhizome.

Understanding the Rhizome

The rhizome is the thick, horizontal stem from which both leaves and roots emerge. It is the engine of the entire plant. Roots grow downward from the rhizome and anchor into whatever surface the plant is attached to. Leaves grow upward from the rhizome in a sequential chain, with new leaves emerging from the growing tip at one end.

This structure is critically different from most stem plants or rosette plants like Amazon swords. With a sword plant, the crown — the central point where leaves emerge — sits at substrate level, and the roots extend below into the soil. With Anubias, the rhizome must remain fully exposed to the water column. If it is buried, even partially, it cannot exchange gases properly. Oxygen becomes depleted around the rhizome tissue, anaerobic bacteria colonize the area, and rot sets in quickly.

Rhizome rot is the single most common way beginners kill Anubias, and it is entirely preventable.

Rot typically begins within a week or two of burial. The rhizome turns black and mushy, the rot spreads toward the growing tip, and once it reaches that tip, the plant cannot produce new leaves. If caught early — before the rot reaches the growing tip — the plant can sometimes be saved by trimming away the affected section. But prevention is far easier than treatment.

The rule is simple: the rhizome lives in open water. Always.

Setting Up: How to Attach Anubias Correctly

Because Anubias cannot be planted in substrate the conventional way, you need to attach it to a hardscape element — driftwood, rocks, aquarium-safe resin decorations, or purpose-made plant weights. There are two primary methods: tying and gluing.

Method 1: Tying with Thread or Fishing Line

Tying is the traditional method and the one most forgiving of repositioning.

What you need:

Black cotton thread, dark fishing line (monofilament), or purpose-sold plant-tying thread
Scissors
The Anubias and your chosen attachment surface

Step-by-step:

Remove the plant from its pot or tissue culture container. Rinse it gently under dechlorinated or room-temperature tap water to remove any gel medium (tissue culture plants) or rockwool.
Trim any dead, yellowed, or extremely long roots with clean scissors. Healthy roots are white to light tan. Roots do not need to be shortened, but very long ones can be tidied up. Do not remove all roots — they help anchor the plant as it establishes.
Position the rhizome flat against the surface of the wood or rock. The roots should be facing the surface, not the open water. The rhizome itself sits on top of the surface, exposed.
Cut a length of thread — roughly 30–40 cm is manageable. Wrap it across the rhizome (not around individual leaves) in an X pattern, then loop around the wood or rock and tie it off. Two or three passes is usually sufficient.
Make sure no thread is wrapped tightly around individual leaves or cutting into the rhizome. The thread simply holds the plant in position while roots grip on their own.

Cotton thread will naturally biodegrade over several weeks in the aquarium, usually around the time the plant’s roots have gripped the surface well enough to stay without assistance. Fishing line is permanent and will need to be carefully cut away once the plant is established (usually 6–10 weeks).

Method 2: Super Glue (Cyanoacrylate Gel)

This method sounds alarming to beginners but is entirely safe and widely used by professional aquascapers. Standard cyanoacrylate gel — the kind sold as super glue at any hardware store — is aquarium safe once cured. It is inert, non-toxic to fish and invertebrates, and bonds Anubias to hardscape almost instantly.

Important: Use gel formulation, not liquid. Liquid super glue runs, is harder to control, and will bond your fingers to each other with great enthusiasm.

Step-by-step:

Remove the plant from its packaging and trim as described above.
Pat the rhizome and the attachment area on the wood or rock as dry as possible. Super glue cures via moisture, which means it grips in water — but applying it to a dripping-wet surface can cause it to cure in foam rather than a firm bond.
Apply a small amount of glue (pea-sized) to the rock or wood surface, not to the plant.
Press the rhizome firmly onto the glue and hold for 30–60 seconds.
Allow it to cure fully — around 5 minutes out of water — before placing the piece back in the tank.

The white residue that sometimes forms around the glue point is harmless and will fade within a few days. Once cured, the bond is stronger than it looks, and the plant’s own root system will reinforce it further over the following weeks.

Choosing Your Attachment Surface

Almost any aquarium-safe hardscape works:

Driftwood — the most popular choice. Anubias naturally grows on wood in the wild, and the porous surface gives roots excellent grip.
Lava rock and dragon stone — rough surfaces that roots cling to well.
Smooth river stones — glue works better than tying on very smooth surfaces.
Coconut shells — popular for small tanks and shrimp setups.
Commercial plant holders and suction-cup clips — useful for tanks where you want the plant floating mid-column rather than on the bottom.

Avoid limestone and other calcium-carbonate-rich rocks if you are keeping soft-water species, as they will leach minerals and raise hardness over time.

Water Parameters and Environment

One of Anubias’ greatest strengths is its tolerance of a wide range of water conditions. It does not demand the precise parameters that many other plants require.

Temperature

Anubias is comfortable between 22°C and 28°C (72°F–82°F). It can survive brief exposure outside this range but sustained temperatures below 18°C will slow growth to almost nothing, and above 30°C can stress the plant.

pH

It tolerates pH from roughly 6.0 to 8.0, making it one of the few plants suitable for African cichlid tanks, which often run at pH 7.5–8.2. For most community tanks in the 6.8–7.4 range, it will thrive without any special adjustment.

Water Hardness

Anubias is indifferent to hardness. Soft rainwater setups and hard tap water tanks both support it equally well.

Lighting

Anubias is a shade plant. In the wild it lives under forest canopy, in shallow but shaded water. In the aquarium, it genuinely prefers low to medium light — roughly 20–40 PAR at the plant surface is ideal for most species. High-light conditions (above 60–70 PAR) do not make it grow faster; they make it grow algae.

Algae on Anubias leaves is the most visible consequence of too much light, and it is a chronic frustration for beginners who assume more light equals better growth. Because Anubias leaves are so long-lived — individual leaves can persist for a year or more — algae that colonizes them is difficult to eradicate without manually cleaning each leaf.

Position Anubias in shaded areas: behind taller plants, under overhangs, in corners where direct light is reduced, or at the lower light intensity end of a gradient. If algae is covering leaves despite seemingly reasonable light levels, reduce the photoperiod before reducing intensity.

Flow

Anubias appreciates moderate water movement. Stagnant water promotes algae and can allow detritus to settle on leaves. A gentle current that keeps water circulating past the plant without blasting it is ideal.

Fertilization

Anubias is not a heavy feeder. It absorbs nutrients primarily through its leaves and roots from the water column rather than from substrate, which is another reason substrate planting is not the appropriate method.

What It Needs

Like all plants, Anubias uses macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) and micronutrients (iron, manganese, magnesium, and trace elements). In a tank with fish, fish waste provides substantial nitrogen and phosphorus. Iron and potassium are often the first nutrients to become limiting in a planted tank.

How to Feed It

A general-purpose liquid fertilizer dosed weekly or twice weekly is sufficient for most Anubias tanks. Root tabs are largely unnecessary because Anubias does not draw nutrients through substrate roots the way swords or crypts do. If you are dosing a balanced liquid fertilizer and your tank has fish, Anubias will typically want for nothing.

Signs of nutrient deficiency:

Yellowing of older leaves (nitrogen deficiency) — increase liquid fertilizer dose or check that your tank is not overly filtered for nutrients.
Pale new leaves or yellowing between leaf veins (iron deficiency) — add an iron-specific supplement or switch to a fertilizer with chelated iron.
Holes in leaves — sometimes potassium deficiency, sometimes physical damage from fish or snails.

CO₂

Anubias grows slowly and does not require CO₂ injection. It will grow faster with CO₂, but the benefit is modest, and the additional nutrients available from CO₂-accelerated growth can actually worsen algae problems if light is not carefully managed. For a beginner low-tech tank, skip CO₂ entirely.

Growth Rate and Pruning

Anubias is one of the slowest-growing aquatic plants in common use. A healthy plant might produce one new leaf every two to four weeks under good conditions. This is not a sign of poor health — it is simply the plant’s nature.

What to Expect

When you first add Anubias to your tank, it may enter a brief adjustment period of two to four weeks during which it produces no new growth or drops a leaf or two. This is normal. It is transitioning from emersed (above water) growing conditions — which is how most commercially farmed Anubias is grown — to submerged conditions. The emersed leaves it arrived with may gradually yellow and die off, to be replaced by new, submerged-grown leaves that are often slightly different in shape and texture.

How to Prune

Pruning Anubias involves two main actions:

Removing dead or damaged leaves — cut these off at the base of the leaf stem (petiole) with clean scissors. Do not tear leaves, as this can introduce infection points.
Dividing the rhizome — as Anubias grows, the rhizome extends outward. When it becomes very long (15 cm or more) or when you want to propagate the plant, you can cut the rhizome with a clean, sharp blade. Each section with at least three leaves and a visible growing tip will grow into an independent plant. Sterilize your scissors or blade between cuts if you have multiple plants to avoid spreading potential pathogens.

After dividing, each new section can be attached to its own piece of hardscape using the methods described above. This is how Anubias is propagated — it does not produce runners or seeds in the aquarium under normal conditions.

Compatibility with Fish and Invertebrates

Anubias is one of the most fish-safe plants in the hobby. Its thick, waxy leaves resist the damage that fish inflict on softer plants like java fern or stem plants.

Cichlids — even large, plant-uprooting cichlids tend to leave Anubias alone. Gluing or firmly tying it prevents dislodgement even if fish do investigate it.
Goldfish — generally avoid Anubias, though some individuals may nibble. Its leaves are unpalatable enough that significant damage is rare.
Plecos — some plecos (particularly larger common plecos) will rasp Anubias leaves, creating pitted holes in the waxy surface. If this happens, relocate the Anubias out of the pleco’s favored resting spots, or consider a smaller pleco species.
Shrimp — Anubias and shrimp are an ideal pairing. Shrimp graze biofilm from Anubias leaves (helping control algae) while the dense root system provides cover and foraging ground.
Snails — mystery snails, nerite snails, and ramshorn snails all coexist peacefully. Some snails will graze algae from leaves, which is beneficial.

Practical Tips

Buy tissue-culture Anubias when possible. Tissue-culture plants are grown in sterile conditions and are free of snail eggs, algae spores, and aquatic pests. They arrive in small sealed containers with gel medium, which should be rinsed away before planting.
Rinse new plants before adding them to an established tank. Even potted Anubias from reputable stores can carry hitchhikers. A brief rinse in dechlorinated water and a visual inspection is good practice.
When using super glue, less is more. A pea-sized amount is enough for a full-sized Anubias barteri. Excess glue creates an ugly white mass and does not improve adhesion.
Position the rhizome growing tip facing outward — away from the rock or wood face — so new growth emerges into open water rather than being compressed against the hardscape.
Algae on leaves can be manually cleaned. Use a soft toothbrush or cloth to gently scrub algae from Anubias leaves during a water change, then siphon the loosened algae out. Nerite snails are excellent algae-cleaners for ongoing maintenance.
Do not trim roots to stub length. Long roots are not harmful and do not need to be cut short unless you are trying to glue the plant (where shorter roots make placement easier). Roots will anchor into substrate or collect detritus, providing surface area for beneficial bacteria.

Common Mistakes

Burying the Rhizome

Already covered at length, but it bears repeating: NEVER bury the rhizome in gravel, sand, or soil. Even covering it halfway is enough to trigger rot. If you purchased Anubias in a pot with rockwool and substrate packed around it, remove all of it before attaching the plant to hardscape. Only the roots go anywhere near the substrate; the rhizome stays exposed.

Placing It in High Light

Beginners often put their new Anubias directly under the brightest spot in the tank, reasoning that more light equals faster growth. With Anubias, this reasoning backfires. High light causes algae to colonize the slow-growing leaves, and once established, that algae is difficult to remove. Tuck Anubias into lower-light zones.

Expecting Fast Growth

After spending money on a plant, it is natural to want to see progress. Anubias growing one leaf per month is growing well. Do not increase fertilization, light, or CO₂ hoping to accelerate it — these interventions are more likely to cause problems than improve growth rate.

Removing All Roots Before Attaching

Some beginners trim all roots flush with the rhizome to make the plant sit flatter against hardscape. This removes the primary anchoring mechanism. Trim only overly long or dead roots; leave healthy white roots in place.

Ignoring the Transition Period

A newly introduced Anubias that drops a leaf or two and shows no new growth for a month is usually fine. Beginners sometimes conclude the plant is dying and take corrective action — changing water parameters, adding fertilizers, adjusting light — which can actually create additional stress. Let the plant settle. New growth emerging from the tip is the confirmation that it has adapted.

Leaving Rotted Leaves on the Plant

Dead or heavily damaged leaves should be removed promptly. Decaying organic matter on a plant can harbor bacteria that may spread to otherwise healthy tissue, and it degrades water quality. Cut cleanly at the base of the petiole.

Conclusion

Anubias is not a plant that rewards intensity — it rewards patience and simplicity. It asks for a shaded position, a modest amount of fertilizer, reasonable water conditions, and one ironclad rule followed without exception: keep the rhizome free of substrate, always.

In exchange for this low-maintenance approach, Anubias gives you a plant that survives conditions that would kill most others, coexists with aggressive fish, provides hiding places for shrimp and fry, and develops into an increasingly beautiful specimen with each passing year. Old, well-established Anubias plants — thick-rhizomed, richly leaved, anchored to a piece of driftwood they have had months to colonize — are genuinely stunning, and they arrived there through nothing more than consistent basic care.

Tie it to driftwood. Glue it to a rock. Give it some shade, a weekly dose of liquid fertilizer, and clean water. Keep the rhizome above the substrate. Then step back and let one of the hobby’s most reliable plants do the rest.