Sword plant babies

[Punkymom]

I have a big ol sword plant growing in the front of my tank. On one of those stalk thingies, there's a miniature one with one long root (about 5 or 6" long) that's finally managed to grow since I changed the inhabitants of my tank. The other fish I had before always chewed it off...little punks. Anyway, should I wait for that to develop more before I try to cut it off? I want to plant it, but I'll wait if I have to. It has about 10 small leaves, also.

 

[Guest]

I've had great difficulty gettin the babies to grow. My Ozelot sword puts them out regularly, and I've tried many times to cut the babies off and plant them. Almost all either outright died, or stayed very small for so long I threw them out. I tried cutting them off small, and waiting till they had a good bunch of roots and 4 inch leaves, either way they rarely thrived. I would say out of 20 or so attempts, I got 3 that grew well, and even they took at least 2 months to take off.

I read somewhere that if you can bend the stalk down to the gravel, anchor the baby plant there, and leave it connected to the mother plant that is supposed to work well. I never wanted another one in the same tank, so always cut them off.

Prolly not much help, but that's all I've got.