Amazon Sword Questions

[rowlf914]

I have two Amazon Sword plants in my 29 gallon aquarium. The crown on one of them is quite large and appears to me to have stems coming up in at least 4 clusters, leading me to believe that there are 4 separate root systems. I was thinking about pulling it up to see if I can separate this into several individual plants, but giving it a gentle test pull yielded quite a bit of resistance, leading me to believe that there is an extensive root system here. I don't want to hurt my plant, so can I gently uproot it, separate it, and put the separate plants back without causing too much problem?

My second question...my swords have some brown and clear leaves. I've been trying to cut these off, and have been doing so at the bottom, but can just the damaged section at the top be cut or should I cutting them at the crown?

I've posted a couple of pics. The first is the big plant with the crown question and the second is the one with the leaf question. Sorry about the image quality...iPad don't take great pictures indoors.

Thanks all.

 

[splattered]

You can pull it up and splice it with a razor/exacto knife to make 2plants. Ideally trimming the largest outer leaves will encourage new growth from the center of the plant but I wouldn't advise doing both operations on the same day. Give it a week to recover. You can absolutely only cut the damaged sections if you don't mind the imperfect leaves but I'd take the whole leaf to encourage new perfect leaves from the center

 

[rowlf914]

You can pull it up and splice it with a razor/exacto knife to make 2plants. Ideally trimming the largest outer leaves will encourage new growth from the center of the plant but I wouldn't advise doing both operations on the same day. Give it a week to recover. You can absolutely only cut the damaged sections if you don't mind the imperfect leaves but I'd take the whole leaf to encourage new perfect leaves from the center

Thanks. I'll get ahead and split it sometime soon.

 

[fishenthusiast]

My second question...my swords have some brown and clear leaves. I've been trying to cut these off, and have been doing so at the bottom, but can just the damaged section at the top be cut or should I cutting them at the crown?

View attachment 301082View attachment 301083

Cut the leaves off as close to the crown as possible. Don't even bother with the damaged section, as the leaf will just die anyway and would be weakened--new leaves will come up eventually. Always cut off decaying or damaged leaves.