October 2009 - Kitchener Waterloo Aquarium Society

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9
PlantED Tank: Pen is Mightier than Sword
A Regular Column by Ed Koerner, KWAS (edkoerner@sympatico.ca).
… But a good sharp knife is much better when dividing them…
As most of you that have been reading my articles here have
likely figured out by now, I am a bit partial to South American
fish. I like plecos, corys, tetras, dwarf cichlids and many of the
other cool and interesting SA species. With that, it would only
be right to incorporate some plants from that bio type and I do
have many in my collection.
Maybe the most commonly thought of aquarium plant when
thinking of the jungles and black water haunts of the Amazon
would be – come on everyone and say it with me – the Amazon
sword. I will describe some of the different swords that I have
kept and propagated. They are quite easy to grow and
propagate really and I did an earlier article on just that subject
in the November 2008 issue of Fins & Tales. For any of you that
do not have a copy Phil has set up a library of past issues on the
KWAS website that can be accessed by club members. Check
out some of those older issues for many interesting and useful
articles and pearls of wisdom.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program; Amazon
swords. These plants fall into the family of Echinodorus and
there are many different shapes, sizes, colours and leaf types to
keep “planties” busy for some time. These babies can grow
from small little pygmy chain swords two inches tall and
thinner than grass to more substantial beast like Amazonicus
that can grow well over two and a half feet tall. There are
narrow leaves and wide leaves, green leaves and red leaves,
straight leaves and ruffled leaves – in short there are currently
30 different species catalogued in the CAOAC directory and
there are more being found or developed all the time. I have
found several new plants offered for sale just recently and hope
to see the numbers grow steadily.
Echinodorus are rather easy to grow and will adapt well to
different water and tank conditions with very little serious
needs. For light, they most need little more than 1 wpg but will
handle higher levels without any issues. They may develop a
bit of red in their leaves and there are several species that have
been developed that are designed to show red. These will need
more light to grow their best – put them in conditions that they
will receive 1.5-2 wpg and their colours will be worth it.
When fertilizing swords, they are more of a root feeder than
leave feeder. Liquid fertilizers will still be useful and increase
growth but you might want to try a tab or cone placed into the
substrata at their roots. These will dissolve slowly over time
and will provide nutrients for several months and can be
simply placed and forgotten. It should be noted that swords
have crowns above the root ball from which the leaves shoot.
When planting be sure to bury the roots but not the crown as
the plant will start to rot away if it is covered too deep. Also,
when planting a large root ball, you may find it easier to either
trim back some of the roots so that you can actually cover them
without many sticking up out of the substrata and looking a
mess or you can loosely tie the roots into a knot and bury the
whole thing.
Being from the Amazon, swords have evolved in soft and
sometimes black water conditions. They will adapt to harder
water but I feel that they will do best in softer water. Swords
will often “melt” or loose most of their leaves when taken out of
one tank and placed into another with widely different
conditions. Usually the old leaves will brown and die back but
if the root ball is healthy there will be new growth develop
shortly. When leaves look to be dying or have been damaged it
is better to trim off the whole leave from the plant. This will
avoid the plant directing wasted attention to the damaged plant
and concentrate its energies to producing new and acclimated
leaves.
Another issue that will often be seen is the leaves developing
holes. This can be from a lack of nutrients and simple fertilizing
should stop this from continuing and allowing new plants to
grow with a rich and healthy appearance. Again, trim off any
damaged leaves to help boost new growth.
As mentioned, swords can acclimated to many conditions. They
will even develop emersed growth and will grow leaves out of
the water. I had a nice sized plant left floating for a while as I
was making some changes to the tank and didn’t have room to
put it anywhere. Well, it floated for some time and after a week
I saw new growth from the root ball, as I had trimmed away
most of the old leaves as they were damaged and rotting. The
leaves were a bit thicker and red-tinged and were doing quite
well for several weeks. Then, I decided to plant the thing and it
only took a few days for the new leaves to fall apart and
disintegrate. I am patiently waiting and hoping for yet another
set of new leaves to form submerged, but starting to wonder if I
waited too long to plant it.
Temperatures do not seem to be a problem with most swords. I
have seen them do fine in various temperatures from high 60’s
in a pond to low 80’s in discus tanks.
After plants have acclimated and have found a happy home
they will grow and propagate in your aquarium. There are
several methods that they will use, some being much easier to
develop new plants from. As they grow and develop stronger
root balls mother plants will send off runners that will send up
plant shoots and will develop into individual plants. You can
simply cut them form the mother plant and move them to
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