# Anybody have expirience with Amazon Sword plant ?



## ppaskova (Apr 27, 2010)

Hi 

Anybody has a expirience of how to keep Amazon Sword plant alive ?
I bough it a month ago from LFS store and has been told that this is low light very hardy plant. For the past month in my fish tank it keep dieing slowly. But some of my other plants like Java fern and Windelove doing very well on another hand. I tried to use florish fertalizer to keep it alive but it indroduced a hair algae to the extend that I had to remove two of my plants and get ottacats and amano shrimps to fight algae on rest of the plants.
I heard that florish tablets under it's roots may help or I have to keep it up on top of the tank. Anybody had expirience with keeping it alive and well ?
Here is my lighting:
This is special light "Life-GLO" bulbs designed by Hagen. And this is what it says on them
- Ideal for planted acuariums
- 6500k natural daylight color temperature
- superior color rendering
- high efficency light output, 64 luments per watt
- stimulates active plant growth
It's a special scu-in florecent light bolbs two by 15W each.
It use to be 7hrs (5PM-midnight)
Any help is appriciated ?


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## Philip.Chan.92 (Apr 25, 2010)

I hear it's a pretty hardy plant, shouldnt give you much trouble. Having CO2 helps control the algae btw.


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## ppaskova (Apr 27, 2010)

Philip.Chan.92 said:


> I hear it's a pretty hardy plant, shouldnt give you much trouble. Having CO2 helps control the algae btw.


I heard the same but my does not look that way. Also I have low light tank where I'm not planning to use CO2 as I'm not ready for it


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## ShrimpieLove (Apr 26, 2010)

How many gallons is your tank? I dont know anything about amazon sword, but I do have that same bulb you have...i found that the plants right under it do really great but the plants that arent as close to it dont do as well cause its a spotlight more than a tube light


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## nicklfire (May 28, 2010)

Sword plants are heavy root feeders so they do best in a substrate media such as eco complete, or flourite, or something similar to that.

They also do well with a laterite below the substrate

Root tabs are great for sword plants, they were designed for sword plants pretty much.

Depending on your sword most of the ones i have kept were not low light, they were mostly Medium light so around 2 wpg..

Watts per gallon: if your tank is 30 gall.. then 2 watts per gallon would be .. 60 watts.


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## ppaskova (Apr 27, 2010)

GuppyLove said:


> How many gallons is your tank? I dont know anything about amazon sword, but I do have that same bulb you have...i found that the plants right under it do really great but the plants that arent as close to it dont do as well cause its a spotlight more than a tube light


Interesting. It is a 10gl tank and the plant is right in the corner of it. And it still small at the moment.


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## ppaskova (Apr 27, 2010)

nicklfire said:


> Sword plants are heavy root feeders so they do best in a substrate media such as eco complete, or flourite, or something similar to that.
> 
> They also do well with a laterite below the substrate
> 
> ...


OK According to your calculation it's 2 foresent scu-in bolbls 15W each in 10gl tank. This means that I have high light as it 3wpg. This is also could explain why I got hair alge and black bush algae as well. Too much light and not to much other ingridiens. Althrough my Java fern is growing (but got both algaes) and my windelove groing ameizingly without any algae. I'm going to put florish tabs under my sword plant. I hope it will help plant to grow.


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## nicklfire (May 28, 2010)

ppaskova said:


> OK According to your calculation it's 2 foresent scu-in bolbls 15W each in 10gl tank. This means that I have high light as it 3wpg. This is also could explain why I got hair alge and black bush algae as well. Too much light and not to much other ingridiens. Althrough my Java fern is growing (but got both algaes) and my windelove groing ameizingly without any algae. I'm going to put florish tabs under my sword plant. I hope it will help plant to grow.


how long is your light on per day? try 8 hours a day if your lights are on for more then that, may help a bit with the algae situation. also trying to lower your lights to 2wpg will help as well.

The more light you have the more your plants are trying to photosynthesis but it's using up all the fertz and co2 in the tank.. so it's being limited. So cut back the light, and it will cut back there growth rate, become more healthy.. hopfully


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## Harry Muscle (Mar 21, 2007)

If you're doing fine with the other plants there's a very good chance the sword is just changing from emersed to submersed growth. Most swords are grown emersed before they are sold and when you put them under water they have to loose all their leaves and grow new ones designed for under water growth. It might just be loosing it's leaves a little faster than growing the new ones and it looks like it's dying. I've had than happen with two of my swords. I was just paitient and waited a good two months until it finally took off. At it's worst thought it had maybe one leaf left, looked almost completely dead, but once it started growing under water leafs it took off nicely.

Harry


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## ppaskova (Apr 27, 2010)

nicklfire said:


> how long is your light on per day? try 8 hours a day if your lights are on for more then that, may help a bit with the algae situation. also trying to lower your lights to 2wpg will help as well.
> 
> The more light you have the more your plants are trying to photosynthesis but it's using up all the fertz and co2 in the tank.. so it's being limited. So cut back the light, and it will cut back there growth rate, become more healthy.. hopfully


I alredy decreased it to 7hrs. I'm thinking to decrease it to 6hrs. As per lights itself it's aspecial lights and the only similar ones I found that are same scu in way florecent lights are the ones from IKEA that are 11Watts insted of 15 watts each. This may help decrease the lights to just over 2WPG as now I also got black bush algae on my decorations as well


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## bob123 (Dec 31, 2009)

*sword plant*

Hello; Every couple of years I have to take my swords out of the water and rejeuvenate. This is done by removing the bulb that is growing in the root system. Remove plant from water feel in the root area for a round ball, move the roots aside and break off this ball and replant your sword. Take this ball and plant it in the substrate sometimes they grow and sometimes not. Also make sure you are feeding the roots with ferts. Good luck.


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