Amazon sword runner.

[noop]

i've got an amazon sword in my 30 gallon tank. a coupla weeks ago it sprouted a stalk and it has grown rapidly. it came up against the lids and then headed sideways and now it stretches across the length of the tank. branches are growing out of it and at one junction there's a leaf. no flowers anywhere yet

what i want to know is can i cut it back without harming the plant? where on the stem do i cut it? can i use the cutting to establish a new plant?

cheers
noop

 

[st.cichlid]

i think you can if its growing THAT big

 

[Eleonora]

It can't hurt to try and grow it from your cutting. If it's growing that well, by cutting 1 of the stems off, the root system on the original plant is already established to grow more, so it should resprout quite quickly.

From what I know the best way to grow a cutting is to place it in some coarse sand, with some fertiliser and make sure it's moist (that problem is taken care of considering the tank and everything). You can buy root hormone from any garden store, but I don't know how it reacts to using it in a fish tank.

I'm so envious, but not to far behind you. Mine has probably tripled in size since I got it 4 months ago. It's about 30cm high with about 10 stems. They're beautiful plants.

I have to opinion that a fish tank is nothing without some live plants. The fish love them and they look so natural and great!

By the way, I love your picture! Rainbow lorikeets are my favourite AUS bird (even though they are probably the loudest and most vocally annoying).

 

[noop]

thanks for that

there's only one main stalk, the branches come off that. i might just cut off one of those branches as close to the main stalk as possible and see if i can get it to grow. or maybe i'll wait to see if more leaves appear. i've only had the plant for about 4 or 5 weeks, and i thought my light levels were too low. it must be down to those fertiliser tablets i've been putting underneath the roots

we get heaps of lorikeets on our balcony since we started putting out food for them. we make sure there's none left by night-time else we get woken very early in the morning by their squawking

 

[Eleonora]

Me and the hubby used to do the same when we lived in Sydney, but after a while the Cockatoos got wind of it, so we had to stop buying apples for the lorikeets and start buying sunflower seeds. After a while no more lorikeets came cause the cockatoos scared them all away and we ended up having to do a morning feed and then an evening feed otherwise we'ed find ourselves being overun by sqwarking hungry cockatoos.

 

[noop]

no cockatoos yet but there are regular squabbles between the lorikeets, the indian mynas, the pigeons (i hate pigeons) and the noisy miners. i thought it'd be peaceful and relaxing to have birds come to visit....