amazon swords

[chappy]

Hi,
Have got an amazon sword growing ok and new plant is now growing on flower stem. Thinking of taking this off and trying to get to grow on a bit of bogwood. Any help appreciated. Do I leave the roots to grow out of the water so nutrient uptake is perhaps better.
Cheers Marc

 

[jose_vogel]

You can cut off the new plants when their roots reachs 2" (5 cm), meanwhile leave them with the "mother plant".

I don´t understand why are you talking to leave the roots out of the water.

 

[dw1305]

Hi Marc,
You can either take the plantlets off like Jose suggests, or feed the flowering stem back under the sand/gravel, and chop the new plants off when you need them. I don't think they will be suitable for growing on bogwood, as they have a lot of roots and like reasonably rich growing conditions.

You can bulk the plantlets up quickly by growing them in shallow trays of water, so that most of the plant is emersed, you need a propagator top (or half a 2 litre soft drink bottle) over them to keep the humidity around the leaves up. I put some in netpots (the ones you get with Tropica plants) filled perlite and fed them with tomato feed, and they grow enormous really quickly. I didn't put them back into a tank so I'm not sure whether all the terrestrial leaves would have come off back in the aquarium.

Java Fern grows well on bogwood, and a large plant will give you much the same look as an Amazon Sword will.

cheers Darrel

 

[chappy]

Cheers for the replies might well try your thing with the tomato feed darrel any recommendation on how much to feed or does this not really matter.

 

[dw1305]

liquid feed

Hi Marc,
Sorry it wasn't very scientific, I just added a little bit every now and then.
I used to work a bit with hydroponic plants, so I could judge whether they were growing acceptably. If the perlite goes green, and the algae grows like mad, it's about the right strength.

If I was going to do it properly I'd make up 1/4 strength "tomorite" (or similar) and add about 50cm3 per litre of water. After about 10 days I'd pour all the water away, flush the perlite through, add new water and after a couple of days add 50cms per litre 1/4 strength feed again. I'd use tank water when I did the water change.

A 1 litre bottle of "Tomorite" would make 225 litres of tomato feed, so in this case almost a thousand litres of "Amazon Sword" feed.

cheers Darrel