linda mar wrote:

Hi,

I got few E. Rubins.. all of them are not doing too well (didn't survive
the transplant shock, bad water, I don't know.. other plants are doing ok).
one of them I think is totally dead (the stem near the crown is decomposing
on all leaves), while the other two is iffi.

the other two, most of the stem bottoms near the crown are decomposing, but
there is one or two very tiny leaf bud-like thing poking through that may be
healthy. there are also one or two strands of root that is coming out of
the crown that looks healthy (the rest looks like a wadded mess).

I will probably pull out the one that looks totally melted out tonight, but
how long should I wait until I give up on the other two? I assume i
shouldn't leave it in there too long as it will polute the tank? (so far
only the bottom part near the crown is melting away. the leaves are still
intact)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.