Amazon Swords. How to split them???

[Behold]

As in the title. I have 1 that is getting bigger and would like to split it in to 2 so i have 3 in the tank. How is best to do this???

 

[aaronnorth]

cut the bulb at the bottom into chunks leaving a few leaves per bulb.

 

[Ed Seeley]

Amazon swords don't grow from bulbs, they are rosette forming plants. I have tried cutting the rosette on large ones in half a couple of times and both halves have always died. They can only be split if there are multiple growing points in a plant mass. Most of the times a large amazon sword is simply 1 rosette. What I would do is remove all but a few leaves and trim the roots to restrict it's growth a bit. However this won't work permanently and you may well be better off getting rid of it and replacing it with a smaller type of sword.

 

[ceg4048]

Gosh Ed, that's really strange because I've never had any trouble propagating swords by pulling/cutting the rosette crown apart, I just pull it apart arbitrarily. As long as a leaf or two separate with and is attached to the separated crown sections I just shove each segment back in the substrate (or discard what I don't want), and they carry on. If you never separate the crown and only ever cut the stems off you wind up with a big bulbous mess at the substrate-water interface that does look quite ugly. With heavy water column dosing and CO2 these plants never miss a beat and are practically indestructible. This becomes tedious after a while and I agree, most swords have the tendency to outgrow the aquarium....

Cheers,

 

[Behold]

Im wanting to split them so i can have more in the tank without them growing from one central point Ill try cutting it once my CO2 is working again....

 

[aaronnorth]

Amazon swords don't grow from bulbs, they are rosette forming plants.

I know... or at least I couldnt remember the corret name at the time

 

[GreenNeedle]

I wouldn't cut them with a knofe. I would just seperate the leaves and then with two firm hands start to pull the crown apart into two just like Ceg says.

AC

 

[Ed Seeley]

Gosh Ed, that's really strange because I've never had any trouble propagating swords by pulling/cutting the rosette crown apart, I just pull it apart arbitrarily. As long as a leaf or two separate with and is attached to the separated crown sections I just shove each segment back in the substrate (or discard what I don't want), and they carry on. If you never separate the crown and only ever cut the stems off you wind up with a big bulbous mess at the substrate-water interface that does look quite ugly. With heavy water column dosing and CO2 these plants never miss a beat and are practically indestructible. This becomes tedious after a while and I agree, most swords have the tendency to outgrow the aquarium....

Cheers,

If they pull apart like that then they ARE separate growing points and will split. I was referring to was one single crown with one growing point. I've tried dividing them using a scalpel to cleanly cleave a single growing point in two and both emersed and immersed and they've never survived for me.