"Dave Millman" wrote in message
...
linda mar wrote:

The general rule for sword leaves is, if they are firm, they are alive.
Once it
turns mushy, or changes from green to yellow or brown, it's dead. Some new
leaves are not green at first, so give them a chance. Rubin leaves can
range
from green to red to dark brown, but light yellow or light brown or grey
are
dead/dying.

yeah. I guess in my case, the leaves were very nice. firm, crispy, good
color.. but just at the base, it had disintegrated... which means roots
weren't getting squat of nutrients from the leaves... never seen this kind
of rotting on terran plants.. i guess that's because if the base melts, the
leaves can't get water, so it wilts, while in aquatic plants, leaves still
can get nutrients and water :-P

Similarly, on swords, white or firm roots are alive, brown or mushy roots
are
dead.

yup. on one of them, when I carefully clipped all the brown and mushy
roots, there was nothin' left.. so I tossed that one. one had two clean
roots, so I left that, the other one seemed like it had more, so I just
clipped the dead-base leaves and left it... that one actually seems to have
rooted. there is nice bright red leaf starting to emerge out of the
crown... I'm keeping my fingers crossed. the one with only two white root
is still fighting.. (no new activity at the base or leaves..)

Don't worry too much about dead plants polluting the tank. Go ahead and
pull out
the obviously dead matter, but leave the plant itself to try to recover.
Once
your tank gets real dense with fish and plants, you won't see dead
anything any
more-somebody eats it all.

yeah.. I need to get me some cories first..

Three months ago, I got a delivery of dwarf hair grass in the mail. Of
about six
plugs, two were dead dead, two had a couple of green sprigs left, and two
were
half green. I weeded out all the brown stuff, keeping only green shoots
and
white roots. This took over 30 minutes, to pull a batch of living plants
smaller
than the mass of your pinkie finger.

that sounds like incredibly painful work..

I planted all of it, which is pretty darn hard for individual strands.
Everything that was green survived, and has increased to approximately 10x
its
original volume (but still less than the total volume of all the fingers
on one
hand!!) The point is, not much plant matter has to survive for the plant
to make
it. Swords are a larger organisim than hairgrass, but give them a chance.

ok! I'll just watch and hope... thank you!

linda