male swordtails

M

maaltan

AC Members
Sep 11, 2004
259
1
16
the brood of baby swordtails has turned out to be 100% male. 9 babies 9 males. each being killed by the dominant male as they turn. I bought a couple of females and right now I am at 2 females and 2 full males, 1 with a hint of a sword and one with the fin in middle of change. I fear that the subdominant adult is near death as he is hiding all the time as the others did. I tried giving the extra males away with no avail. i moved the beat up males into hospital tank only to have them be beat up again when moving back to main tank. I do not have the room to set up multiple tanks so i can only sit and watch them as "nature takes its course"

Recently the females I bought had 5 babies. I want to prevent this drama in the future. I picked up this snippet from this site (up till now I thought it only offered forums I finally got around to clicking home.


A lack of hormones may actually make an adult female revert to a male.
Click to expand...

sooo what hormones and how do i get them to the fish. I would like to have all females if possible to level the playing field a bit. I was reading about how hormones can build up without water changes so lack thereof would point to too many water changes. Something that I am clearly not guilty of.
 
Its debated whether or not swordtail females actually change sex or if they are just juvenile males who develope later. No u cannot buy the hormones. Hormones are delicate organic material and do not last long.
 
sans 1 female. just found her dead. It was probably from delivery stress. she was close yesterday and I hadn't seen her at all today .. ahh well.

how about guppies are they as intraratially violent as swords? will they live in same tank as swords untill they kill each other ...
 
Platies, guppies and mollies are good companions for swordtails. They all require similar conditions and wont gooble up babies as much as some more predatory fish. Male swords and to a lesser extent male mollies will chase rival males. One male per 2-3 females is good. Swords usually are not THAT aggressive. You could just turn in your bully male and keep the less aggressive males.
 
Hey just curious, do you remember at what temperature you kept the tank while raising the brood of swordtail fry? Im just wondering if there is any connection between temperature and gender, as Im trying to avoid raising anymore aggressive males

thanks
 
pisces22 said:
Hey just curious, do you remember at what temperature you kept the tank while raising the brood of swordtail fry? Im just wondering if there is any connection between temperature and gender, as Im trying to avoid raising anymore aggressive males

thanks
Click to expand...


about 78-80. my ph did crash to less than 5.0 due to my ignorance and mis reading the test for about 3-4 weeks when they were about 1"-2" long. lost one from the crash. now all my water changes include a pinch of baking soda per 2-3 gallons. keeps water at about 4dkh and ph of 7.2

Kissofthegorami said:
Platies, guppies and mollies are good companions for swordtails. They all require similar conditions and wont gooble up babies as much as some more predatory fish. Male swords and to a lesser extent male mollies will chase rival males. One male per 2-3 females is good. Swords usually are not THAT aggressive. You could just turn in your bully male and keep the less aggressive males.
Click to expand...

I did ..twice .. which is how i got the 2 females. .. well 1 now.

there is always a male that takes its place and the rest hide for about a month since they lost thier "leader, although i think I am the only person to observe this pack like behaviour.

These are pineapple swords. I wonder if they are more aggressive. or maybe it was a trait of a particular bloodline. I noticed the males were being very agressive in the tank i bought the "seed" females from. I always buy gravid livebearer's since the males tend to be weak and die easy (in my experience, an unjustified parinoia i know) plus if you time it right you can fully stock a new tank (after cycling) for $2 (yeah yeah im cheap also)

If this tank completely nukes itself I think i might try a smaller live breeder. guppies or, If i can find them, the hetrosia ..something. least killifish. its in someone's sig on here. next time I goto georgia i might go pond skimming.
 
I find guppies more pleasing to look at than platies.

Some platies / swords seem to find it necessary to pester and harass all other platies / swords until they have their own tank. Some sort of killer platy lineage that is starting to creep into the pedigree. =/

I'd just return or seperate the male and replace him.
 
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