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Re: Sword plant propogation

Well, I was wanting to make sure these were ready, so
I left them on till they had tons of roots that were
well over three inches, they started to choke out the
mother plant,so I started pulling them. All came off
fairly easily. The red ozelots just love my tank and
are probably my favorite plant, they are gorgeous with
the wide thick leaves. Another interesting thing is
that the mother marble queen has shed pretty much all
of the leaves she came with (obviously grown emersed),
but unlike every other sword I have had this one has
done the opposite. Normally, I see emersed leaves with
long stems and leaves that are more ovate (shorter
oval shape). After they produce new leaves I have
generally gotten the longer leaf with very short
stems. This marble queen however decided to put stems
all the way to the top of my tank ( a 125 so its
pretty deep) and the leaves are all jammed against the
glass top. Wierd plant, if it was not so huge (root
ball almost as big as both my fists together), I would
dig it up and replace it with my ozelots who deserve a
more centerpiece like location in my aquascape.

Scott

Scott wrote:

> Is the marble queen difficult, or is there a
> trick to how and when to remove these plants from
the
> "mother"?

I haven't grown Marble Queen specifically, but your
experience sounds
normal.  A number of factors might contribute to the
plantlets thriving
or failing, and when they're taken off the "mother" is
one of those
factors.

The plantlets don't all develop at the same time; the
plantlets near 
the
base of the spike or runner develop first, and those
farther out 
develop
later.  If you take all of the plantlets off at the
same time then you
will probably
have some with a good chance of developing, some that
are less mature
with an iffy chance and some that probably don't have
much chance at
all.

There's probably also some variation with whether the
plantlets
developed in the water or out of the water.  Some of
the differences I
see between success in emersed culture and submersed
culture may be a
species difference.  My experience is with two
different species of
sword plants.

For plantlets that develop out of the water I transfer
the detached
plantlets to a tray where they grow with their leaves
above water and
the base of the plant in a substrate under water.  I
transfer those to
aquariums after roots develop.  That process has a
pretty good rate of
success.  Plantlets that detach easily have a better
chance of success
than those that are still firmly attached.

I leave plantlets that develop under water on the
runner until after
they have several roots at least 2-3 inches long.  I
detach the mature
plantlets and plant them without any special
consideration.  My success
rate for this method isn't as good as with
emersed-grown plants.  
Again,
plants that detach easily seem to have a better chance
of success.

Of course, keep those plants healthy and it won't be
long before you 
get
to work with another batch of plantlets.


Roger Miller


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