Baby swordtails!

[anark]

Is this normal? I have 2 pregnant swordtails and one of them gave birth while the other is still huge.

the thing is...i have 2 different size fry now! didn't manage to save many...my barbs ate them all =(

so did the fry's come from the same mom?...just different batches?...or is the 2nd mom just squeezing out a few at a time?

I have no other livebearers in my tank. (zebra daino, barbs, loaches, sae, pleco)

i have 1 that's about 5-6mm long and is orange...got him (tiny tim) in a breeding net.

...but i also have 2 REAAALLLLY TINY fry (small fries)...about 2-3mm long. clear with black eyes and a faint spine. they're in a clear jarwith daily water changes

is it possible that 'tiny tim and the small fries' came from the same mom?... and what do i feed them? i've been crushing up flakes and that about it. well..tiny tim ate 2 of the small fries when i had them together =T

Allan!

 

[happychem]

It's likely that they're just dropping a few at a time. I once moved a pregnant swordtail to a hospital tank (she had cottonmouth) and she dropped three or four fry a couple days later. But a couple days after that, she dropped 30-40 more! There's no telling if they came from the same mother or not.

When fry are first born, they don't swim, they just drop to the substrate. After about a day you can catch them swimming (if other fish don't first).

It's unlikely that tiny tim ate any fellow fry, they're all too small to eat each other, plus they don't have much in the way of teeth.

If you want to raise them, get a 10g tank to set up as a fry tank. Provide a light dusting of gravel, not a deep substrate, this will keep it easy to clean. You'll need a filter sooner or later. You don't need a hood or any lighting, but may provide some if yoy wish to decorate the tank and make it presentable, otherwise you can just keep it functional and out of the way.

 

[pl*co]

I don't know how true this is, but I do know it explains some wierd occurrence in my tank. I had two pregnant females ... or at least one and they both came that way from the LFS. I couldn't figure out how I ended up with more than two generations of fry. I mean it was obvious there was time in between, due to the size of the fry. The only other male in the tank was a platy. So I read quite a bit and found out that the dang swords will store sperm. Anyone else ever heard of that? Imagine. A portable sperm bank.

 

[happychem]

I have heard of some critters that'll do that, not swordtails specifically, but I've heard of it, some long, lazy morning watching the discovery channel after a long night of misdeeds.

On the other hand, if you've got a male platy in your tank, that may be the source as well, platies and swords can inter-breed.