Do you have snails or any algae eating fish? My pond snails chew lots of holes
in my sword and pennywort.

Are the leaves turning light green or yellow? Swords do like to have a rich
substrate. You can add plant spikes or laterite balls under the plant.

Someone w/ more experience could give you a more definitive answer.

Cris

In article , "Darwin"
writes:

I have several plants in my aqaurium (java ferns, Anubias, Swords). The
Java fern i've had for over a year now and it' been growing nice and steady
but the Amazon sword i purchased 2 months ago is not looking well. It
practically doubled in the number of leaves during the first month but now
its developing holes in all of it's leaves... first affecting just the old
leaves and now the new sprouts. Basically the end result is a the
"skeleton" of the leaf (just the inside stem plus outline of leaf...
everything in the middle threads away).

Is this a sign of lack of iron?? I know swords like to have a rich
substrate (which i don't have). But for the past year i've been using
MicroNutrient/Iron liquid supplements which my java fern seems to grow
pretty well in (it's around .25 mg/L chleated iron levels). I thought that
the iron through the water column would've been good enough for the Swords
but maybe not? What would be a solution to add to the substrate if this was
the case?

Thanks

Darwin