amazon sword escaping from tank

soco1125

ok, my big sword plant in my 55g has sent a shoot growing up and out of the tank. it's about a foot long and sports several leaves and small white flowers. i asked a fairly knowledgeable employee at the lfs about it, but she says she's never heard of amazons doing this. has anyone ever had this happen to them? should i cut it or just leave well enough alone?

i will post some pics as soon as i can.

fish_4_all

If you want more baby sowrd plants leave it alone. Soon you will have nodes that have leaves starting to grow on them and once they have some sort of root system you can cut them off and plant them for new swords. All you have to do is make sure that the new nodes are allowed to hit the water and a new plantlet will form in time. I had a chain sword that I bought this way. The mother plant was in bad shape but I got 14 plantelets to start new swords from the stalk growing out of the mother plant.

I will see if I can get a friend of mine to post some of the pictures he should have of his sword doing the same thing.

Lonewolfblue

I'll have to look for the pics, I know I have them on my server. Will just need to go back in time to find them, lol. Also, for swords, if the runner goes out of the water, they will form nodes as well, and will flower at each node. After flowering, you can place the nodes back into the tank, and roots will form. Before cutting, the roots should be at least 3 inches, and several roots. If not enough roots are formed, the baby might die off. So there's different options, keep the runner in the water to root, or let the runner come out of the tank so it will flower, then place back into the tank and roots will form. I'll look for the pics tonight when I get back from work and will post them. They are from my Ozelot Sword.

herefishy

Awesome, simply awesome. Momma sword does this every few months. I now have over 100 Amazon swords in different tanks. I started out with Big Momma. Truly amazing. You are certainly doing something right.

Lonewolfblue

Here's some pics I've found.......Hope it's enough, LOL

herefishy

Try to keep the rhisome wet and in the water. Mine dried out and the new plants died when I left them out of the water.

Lonewolfblue

The rhysome? Those pics with the roots are under water pics. When above the water, roots don't begin to form, none of mine have ever died. The leaves on the babies just kept getting bigger, and kept flowering. Then when I placed back into the water, it began sending out roots.

soco1125

thanks guys :) i'm still kinda new to the whole plant thing. my one book didn't provide any info and i've been without internet for months... ya'll are the best resource :D

Lonewolfblue

I prefer "rescue" myself. hehehe. And has to be an ACD, LOL....

soco1125

duly noted. beautiful babydog, by the way :D