[mitchfish9]

It was a dumb idea to put an amazon sword in my little 26g. But i was a beginner. It doesn't have enough space to spread side to side , and the ludwigia is just taking over that side of the tank. Like the title says I need to remove this without creating a big mess in my tank, and I need some advice/input.

Thanks

 

[gy960]

Position ur siphon near the base to suck the detritus that entered the water column when u pull the sword out. I used this method when pulling up plants wif extensive root system eg. crypts

 

[Zefrik]

I made sure I had some substrate (in my case black diamond) ready to patch the area. Next I grabbed the plant at the very base and gently tugged and twisted it. A bit of dirt was loosened and released into the tank. Once I had about an inch of roots out I cut the rest of the roots off and pulled the plant out. I siphoned the area to get clumps of dirt off of the sand and then grabbed some of the black diamond by the handful and "patched" the section where the plant was. After a couple of water changes and some filter wool the tank was clear and back to normal. The sword recovered very quickly in another tank and the left over roots are now a part of my substrate.

 

[Minja]

The joy of a dirtied tank. I hate moving stuff around my dirt ank too.

 

[mitchfish9]

Ok thanks guys I will use a combo of what you guys said. I will pull slowly with the siphon and get as much roots out as I can before it gets ugly. Then I will cut the remaining roots off.

So the leftover roots wont cause any problems right?

 

[wicca27]

i pull slowly, and once can see the main roots i just pull one by one i removed a monster rubin sword from my 55 that had soil capped with pool filter sand this way. took me almost 30 min but no mess in the tank

 

[DogFish]

If you haven't resolved third yet I would add turn off all your water movement devices. I've found it's all about having a Slow Hand and the Wiggle & Giggle.