breeding swordtails.

terror said:

Hi,.

I have some swordtails at home.
planning to bree dthem , some of the females are pregnant. just wondering. do i move them to a separate tank? also how do you know if the female will already give birth?

thanks.

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Hey Terror,
It depends on what you have in that tank and how big it is. Swords are pretty big fish that need lots of room to move around. I keep them in minium of a 20-29 gallon tanks. I like keeping them with lots of Java Moss and Hornwort in the tank for the fry to hide. So if you have lots of drift wood, live plants and plenty of space you should be ok. I also tend to breed them by themselves. So basically I have species only tanks for most of my live bearers.

terror said:

thanks!
they are in a 75 gallon tank right now. with a skunk loach and a silver arowana.
bought them as feeders for my arowana, but decided tio raise them and breed them instead

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WEll you are not gonna get them to breed in there with an Arrowana. Plus that guy will need to be moved to a much larger tank as time goes on. a 75 is way to small for that guy.

hello there.. just want to share my experience with swordtails

a year ago, i had 8 (1male and 7 females) given to me by e neighbour
i did put them in a pond heavily planted with cabomba(fanwort) and some unknown pondweeds.. i also did put a lot of rocks for future fry to hide in..

right now i think i have hundreds of em in the pond... i think that the pond is overstocked already so every month.. i take about 15-30 of em... find some willing takers.. and if i dont find any i would have to feed em to some of my carnivorous fish (sorry swordtail lovers.. i need to do this in order to save the other ones from the pond crashing or something)

in breeding, i think it is important to have floating plants.. new born fry tend to swim up the surface.. the adults will try to eat em most of the time so its important to have hiding places for em... hornwort is good for that just like tricksterpup said... after a few days... the fry will start swimming to the bottom so its good to have some hiding places in there too in the form of rocks or small caves... the adults will stop chasing them eventually when they start to have some coloring in them (probably because they would be bigger than the adults' mouths i dont know really )

if u r planning to breed em in ur aquarium, maybe u need some pre-filter sponge of some sort to avoid having the fry sucked into it...

and btw, these things can grow, some of mine are abt 4-5 inches long already... i dont know the maximum size, maybe u can ask tricksterpup, he knows a lot about livebearers

gud luck

They can grow and 4 to 5 inches is max size. When your breeding them I would suggest that you keep mixing them up by selling some and getting a new male or female from different stores in the area. THis should help prevent problems from inbreeding.

beautiful fish!