male swordtails
 

hello everyone

just wanted to ask something about swordtails..

are the males born with the gonopodium? or is it something they develop as they grow older?

just curious bcoz i have a swordtail pond running for about 4 mos. now and i have hundreds of fry i think, some of which are now probably adults being almost 2 inches long..

the reason im asking this is because so far, i have only spotted 1 with a gonopodium and he is about 1.5" long and is starting to grow a "sword" on his tailfin..

all the rest doesn't have a gonopodium..

so does this mean i only have 1 male overall? or do i have to wait for some of the fry (less than 1") to grow before i can check?

its not that hard looking for the gonopodium because the pond is elevated and i just have to put my eye at water level at the side of the pond and they all come near me because they think they r gonna eat lol

thanx for the time

btw, should this thread be in the newbie section? sorry for that ;)

Your swordtails should be fully sexable at that age, so yep, looks like alot of females...I have some platys in a planted tank and all the babies are girls with the exception of one confirmed male that I have spotted...
Congrats its a girl! and a girl, and a girl, and a girl......

I seems like females are a lot more common. Even at my LFS they have a tank with about 30 ST and there were only about 2 males in there.

omg lol

nice male-female ratio 1:a hundred?

i read something before that on the average should be 1:5, either what i read is wrong or all the males got eaten hehe

i was kinda worried having only 1 male (less than 2"), the females are treating him like a gasoline station, he is swimming by his lonesome then a female would approach and rape him lol..
well not really rape coz i can see him responding by hooking his gonopodium to the female.. m just worried that it might exhaust him or sumthing?
a lot of the females are trying to mate with him.. this normal?

plus i have 6 females 3"+ in length... they lost their male though.. died w/ no apparent reason, old age perhaps? don't know how old they r because they were just given to me as gifts :duh:

thanx for the responses

Probably sexed to death...Did you call him Hef? Just kidding, he was probably just old...
For some reason the female ratio thing is ringing a bell...I think I read an article somewhere about female hormones in the water contributing to the high numbers of females...I could be totally off base,but it sounds familiar. Personally I put it down to the males being dumber and the superior sex prevailing... :)

I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard that the pH level in the tank determines the sex of the majority of fry??? :huh:

i also read something that said that females can convert themselves into males if the water conditions are not suitable for breeding.. they will even try to mate with other females but with a very low or even no chance of impregnating them :cool:

i also read an old post by mishi8 where i think she said that the gonopodium is not yet visible or not yet there in small fry and that all of them look like females? don't know though..

my male is starting to hide from the females lol
he doesn't wanna have sex anymore
when a female approaches he slowly swims away.. but he still eating though
must be stressful for him?

I've heard that swords can change teams also, but in many cases, the males could just be slow developers....where in the early years they all look like females.