Sword Question

C

Captain Hook

Looking for ideas
Aug 21, 2003
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I was given a nice looking amazon yesterday by a friend of mine. He couldn't tell me anything about it tho. Basically it looks a lot like this pic of ech. bleheri:

varenr071.jpg


Tropica lists this plant as getting 20-50 cm high. Right now in my tank it's only about 6 inches high. The leaves are quite round and have about 4 inch stems. There's about 10-15 leaves.

What I really want to know is will this plant keep taller, wider, or what? What can I expect from this plant?
 
Few swords have round leaves - do you maybe mean "rounded"?

If the plant has been in your friend's tank submerse for some time, chek the Tropica site again for E. parviflorus 'Tropica'. It is the only one I know that is rounded leaf and stays small (6" is standard height). Excellent plant... after you get offspring, plant in groups.

E. bleheri in my tanks gets much more elongate, spear-shaped leaves submerse (IMHO the sketch is an emerse plant, or I have never had the real E. bleheri - unlikely). It is slow growing for me, but eventually gets very large - glorious plant, but will 2/3 -3/4 fill a 50. They can be pruned (older outer leaves) to help slow growth.
 
WOW!!! You know what RTR I think you are right! I had quickly looked through all the tropica ech. species and not really gave much consideration to parviflorus. Looking at much more carefully now I am almost positive it is parviflorus! I can't believe my good luck.

You are right, I didn't mean the leaves are round, just more round than a lot of swords. Definitely rounded.

So I can just pick off stems that I think are older to keep the plant a moderate size?
 
If it really is E. parviflorus, you won't need to do much pruning,but you can if needed/desired. They never grow large - which is their great value, no taller than it is right now unless your light is very low (I don't think it is). They just get a bit bushier with age - and throw more pups, which is great. And yes, for a gift plant, no ID, that is one of the best IMHO.
 
Yea I certainly can't beat the price! :)

Right now my light is quite low but I will be getting a power compact in about a week that will put me at about 2 wpg.

Anyone experience with stargrass RTR? I've heard it's quite a high light plant but he gave me some of that too so I thought I would try it.
 
If, by Stargrass, you're talking about Heteranthera Zosterifolia, it is not a difficult plant to grow, but does require relatively high light.
With 3 watts/gal. you have a fighting shot at success with it.
Give it a shot anyway and let us know how you do with it.
If pruned short it can become very dense, which is in some respects a disadvantage as it shade itself if not thinned occasionally.

Len
 
stargrass

I got my stargrass from a killie guy (threw in a few stems with the killies I was getting), and he was growing it under 2 or less WPG. He had it in several of his tanks and seemed to be growing fine in all of them. I stuck them up front and they've been growing well, but certainly not explosively under 3wpg. It throws out lots of roots at the nodes, which pull the plant down and make it grow sideways an inch or two off the substrate in my tank. In the other guys tanks, they grew more upright, probably because the light was lower. It's dark green color suggests to me that it'll tolerate lower light levels than many other plants. I enjoy that it's a stem plant that stays low for the foreground, though it isn't very pretty compared to didiplis or pearlweed.
 
Thanks promethean. I am hoping to use it as a midground plant in a tank that's only 12" deep so there isn't a lot of room. I'm hoping it to keep it about 6-8 inches tall and as bushy as possible. The slow growth will probably make it easier to maintain so I don't mind that.
 
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