Pygmy Sword Plant Care?

[KewtyPatootie]

Hello,

I have some pygmy sword plants in my 10G aquarium.
They're the ones that look like clumps of somewhat tall grass.
For the most part, they're healthy, except I do notice that at least one or two leaves at a time are always turning brown.

Lighting is on during daytime, substrate is sand. I heard that they are easy plants to grow, but don't enjoy having to cut off the dead leaves every week or so.

Thank you!

 

[JohnPaul]

I'm not very familiar with pygmy swords, but when it comes to swords in general, they tend to be heavy "root feeders." That means, they get almost all of their nutrients through their roots. If your substrate is plain sand, then there is no inherent nutrients in your substrate. That is the likely cause of your swords not doing so well.

Consider getting some type of fertilizer tablets to bury in your substrate. Most decent pet stores sell them, or you can order them online from virtually any online aquarium shop. That should provide nutrients to the roots and help your swords grow. One example of a good, high quality root tab are Flourish tabs. There are others as well, but Flourish makes a variety of products that have a very good reputation among planted tank owners which is why I give them as the first example. If you can't find them locally, among the places that sell them online are Big Als which is a great source for lots of aquarium stuff. One small package costs less than $10 and would have enough tabs to cover a 10g tank twice over, and the tabs last a LONG time.

Now there *could* be other possible problems as well, but whenever I hear about problems with swords in regular sand, usually the first option to consider is lack of root nutrients. If you get the tabs and there are still problems, then you would probably start looking at issues of lighting (how man watts? what spectrum/color? how many hours per day?), nitrate levels, phosphate levels, etc.

 

[Crepe]

Few questions I guess:
Take size ( LxWxH and volume)
Lighting wattage, color temperature, output type (t5, t8, t12 etc.)
Fertilizers
Substrate
Co2?
pH and hardness if you have the test for it
temperature and also how long you've had the plant
Also, what exactly do you mean by dead leaves? Do you mean browning? Yellowing? Pinholes?

 

[mgamer20o0]

they are a slow growing plant plus they need a good amount of light. also many of them are grown emerged and there is a transition time until they start growing submerged.

 

[KewtyPatootie]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I have a regular? rectangular 10G.
Tank is usually kept between 78-79 deg.
No fertilizers, and sand substrate.
Not sure about CO2.. but it's well aerated.
pH is 7.2 as of today.

For the most part, the leaves seem fine, but little black dots appear, then turn into holes. I did hear that an abundance in nitrates can cause this?
The ends of some of the leaves are yellow as well.
The leaves that have progressed with the above damage, slowly turn brown and die.

Also, the part where the roots and leaves meet, it's brown as well and I can pluck out leaves easily.