red sword woes

I have two red sword plants in a 60 litre tank with some aluminium plant and thin val. i have seen these grown over rocks and driftwood. Mine i planted straight in the gravel. They were initially growing in rockwool in a little pot do-hicky which i painstakingly removed. they seemed to flourish but one has almost had all but two of its roots die and rot off. Should they be just left on rock/wood or do they prefer a substrate. Other plants are thriving. the rhizomes are slightly above the substrate. I have a population of snails. one golden mystery snail. Would they attack the exposed roots? they were $13 bucks each so i dont want to lose them.

This my friends is the better specimen. it was sold to me as an assorted sword. As in the pet shop had no idea so the ones that look like swords go in this " sword" tank!! Both were in extremelt good nick. I was cleaning the tank with a gravel siphon and knocked it an it pretty well came away and the roots looked like they had rotted off. I have seen these affixed on driftwood and they said they attached initially with fishing line or cotton and by the time it perished the sword had attached itself to the wood. I said rhizome but i think that was incorrect. I think its called a rossette. Anyway the leave sprout above gravel level so shouldn't rot off. I tried a close up of the worse one but thats the best i could get with the digital.

Well it should have been easy. I cant seem to get it small enough to send it. do you know how i can reduce it. i took it at 1.7 dpi. lowest seting on camera

I can only seem to get them to around 530kb each. Do you guys know how to reduce the image quality enought to get it to the 60kb i can post on this site.
If not can i email directly to someone?

sorry for the delay, ive been busy with work and havent been online in a while. The gravel is about 5mm which i think is about 1/8" in the states.maybe a little coarser but not by much. No additives other than aqua master bio booster {liquid bacteria booster for cycling}. I use an under gravel filter with a powerhead. some plants are just going for it but the sword just seemed to stop growing and the roots had rotted away. i have used a gravel siphon during water changes and till recently let it suck deep into the gravel to get the muck out. i could have damaged the roots at some point allowing bacteria into the plant roots through injury. the thin val and the aluminium plant are going great guns. i have snails but they only seem to eat the dying leaves back to a skeletal frame of veins. I had a sticky at the petshop and they had these {or what looked like these} attached to driftwood. Do they prefer to be above the medium level?

Thinking about it they did both go great guns when i first put them in heaps of long healthy roots. i moved them once but didnt think i damaged them at all. and i gently dug them up with my fingers , i didnt pull them out. Maybe the rotting roots could have upset my nitrate levels. i dont have a kit to test it but it started losing fish and all i could think of was gill fluke. maybe the o2 level were effected by the decomposing roots? does that sound feasable?

i tried that imageshack. the limit is 1200kb for an image ,the one i tried was 600kb. it didnt work. it tried to upload then it couldnt find the page. must have been when it tries to come up with links. any alternatives?