substrate compaction and plant health

[wolf13]

I am rescaping my tank in preperation for some new arrivals, and I am planning out my plant arraingment. I have a nice amazon sword, some incredible amazon drwarfs and a couple of nice ruffled swords. however, i also had an area that the swords did very little in and are scrawny and underdevolped. The ONLY differnces in the areas was a much larger piece of driftwood and obsidion in the area and its slightly warmer then the other end of the tank. substrate is flourite. Now, I know compaction is a serious issue in terrestrial plants, is this my likely problem here or is there another factor.

No extra shadowing, good water flow, slightly warmer thne the end with the better plants, fertilized with CO2, same plant source (even daughter plants used in both areas performed differntly). The large drfitwood and obsidion chunk took up a lot of area, and while th eotherside also had driftwood, it was less massive and smaller footprints.

[Draal5]

compaction is also a problem in aquatic plants.

How long has the substrate been in the tank ?

I would hazard to guess that this is not your problem but if it is MTS will help with it get some for the classifieds. Its easy to tell if compaction is your problem (be careful doing this) wiggle you finger in a spot and see how hard it takes to get to the bottom of your substrate.only do it in 1 or 2 spots as you don't want to trigger an ammonia spike or worse.

Have you tried a couple of root tabs for the swards that are not growing.
Seachem's root tabs are the Best IMHO a couple of those and I believe that your swards will grow