Comments: Here you see two sword plants, The Oriental Sword in the back with the pink leaves and a Tropica Sword next to it with the green leaves. It was sold to me as Compact Sword so I am not sure about the name. As you can see the Oriental Sword is extremely crowed. In fact it is really 5 plants. Sword plants will grow floral stalks that little plantlets start from. Most sword do this. What I do is cut them off as soon as see them unless I want to start new Sword plants. If so let the new plantlets stay on the floral stalks until they have several roots growing from them. That is how I started the Tropica Sword in the photo. The Oriental Sword how ever started new plants next to the main root. I uprooted and separated the plants. Five in all and replanted them in other tanks. I sold some at my LFS. The Oriental Sword did out grow this 55gal tank. The new Swords where replanted in a 75gal and stayed just under the top without out growing the tank. The substrate in the 55gal tank is gravel with a little Flourite mix. I add 13-4-5 root tabs along with Iron tabs. The 75gal has Eco-Complete. The Tropica Sword is another sword that stays small. Most of them will stay under 10 inches but I have had some reach 12 inches plus. Their leaves stay a bright green. They like to send out floral stalks and are easy to start new plants from.