We explore the anomaly induced effective QCD meson potential in the framework of the effective Lagrangian approach. We suggest a decoupling procedure, when a flavored quark becomes massive, which mimics the one employed by Seiberg for supersymmetric gauge theories. It is seen that, after decoupling, the QCD potential naturally converts to the one with one less flavor. We study the N c and N f dependence of the η ' mass.