Off Shots

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Sabina

Sabina

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Jul 31, 2013
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I don't really know much about plants but I have heard that you can cut and replant offshoots of plants.
I have a amazon sword that I put in a décor thingy and its been in there for about a little under half a year. For most of that it was in my goldfish tank and it was doing pretty good, I finally moved it into my new betta sorority tank a few weeks ago.
Almost 70% of the main plant has melted (this was before it went into the new tank) I think this was because I trimmed a few parts and the plant wasn't very happy about that. Though there are still living parts of the main plant
But I do have a long thing of off shoots, I think about four separate plants with lots and lots of long skinny roots.
I was wondering to replant them, would I just cut apart each section then replant them?
Also how do I get rid of all the dead leaves without causing the other leaves to die too?
 
The Zigman

The Zigman

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Oct 5, 2007
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once the plantlets get a decent root system on them you can separate them from the runners and plant individually. As for the mother plant, pruning off the dead or dying leaves is usually a pretty good idea, do you have any idea what is causing the plant to melt? do you dose ferts? do you test fert levels?
Is the mother plant turning yellow? Clear-ish?
 
Sabina

Sabina

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Thank you for the help so far.
I don't use any fertilizer I just let my plants grow from the ammonia
The main plant starts turning yellow when its beginning to die but its all dead now and brown, I would have trimmed it by now but I didn't want the rest of the plant to die.
Ive heard that a lot of the times that new plants will melt, but all the off shoots seems to be doing well so I might just get rid of the original plant and keep the shoots.
 
Sabina

Sabina

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So I just went for it and took it out of the water and trimmed it.
I had forgotten that it was 3 plants all together instead of one.
Oodly enough the off shoot didn't come from the healthiest one of the 3. But now there all spread out, the main plants are in decorations and the off shoots are in my small pile of river rocks (I have a bare bottom tank) Fingers crossed that they'll all grow in.
How long does it take for amazon swords to grow?
 
F

fishorama

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What's your nitrate level? Swords are pretty heavy (root) feeders...The offsets should be ok removed from the mother plant if they have good root growth...with enough food to grow well. I remove any dead or even dying leaves mostly just for aesthetics.
 
A

asukawashere

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The bare bottom tank is the problem—as fishorama says, swords are heavy root feeders. Without anything for their roots to grab onto, the roots die back, and then the whole plant goes. They like to have a few inches of fine substrate to bury themselves in.
 
JAY973

JAY973

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Dec 24, 2005
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You can still keep a bare bottom tank but you may want to put the sword in an appropriate size clay pot with some substrate and root tabs. Or if you can do Anubias weighing it down with a rock would do fine in a bare bottom tank.
 
Sabina

Sabina

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Im actually planning on adding some substrate soon since I want to turn it in to more of a planted tank.
I think ill probably use river rocks or gravel, I want something big enough that my bettas cant swallow but small enough that all the poop doesn't get trapped.
I do like sand but I don't think im ready for that yet.
Should they be ok for a month or most like that?
 
A

asukawashere

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It's kind of the point of substrate in a planted tank to trap fish poo to use as fertilizer. IME standard "pet store size" gravel isn't very good for growing swords. Fine gravel, with grains in the 2mm range, would work—if you can find it locally. Swords really do prefer having something finer to grab onto. JAY973's suggestion of a clay pot would be a good idea—fill the pot with sand and a root tab and you can cap the top inch or so with gravel if you like to keep it away from the betta.

...Also, FWIW, I've never heard of a betta actually swallowing sand. They might pick it up in their mouths to try and scrape some microbes off of it or just to see what it is, but they always spit it back out. On the list of reasons not to have a sand substrate, that one doesn't even show up.
 
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