Swordtails…

[mynameisnobody]

How difficult is it to breed swordtails? Seems like any other livebearer I’ve had, you just add water and fry appear. I’ve read that swordtails can be trickier. Any and all experiences are appreciated. Thank you 

[gardenman]

I always found swordtails to be absurdly easy to breed, with one caveat. The high-fin varieties tend to have issues where the males' gonopodium is no longer effective due to the length. Standard, short-fin swordtails should breed readily for you. Just be aware that they're pretty aggressive predators also, so fry survival can be more of an issue than with less predatory livebearers.

[nabokovfan87]

I recently found a research study that some lines that have melanoma issues, the parents can actually become sterile as a result of this after a certain time period.  I can find the study if need be, but it was during a deep dive trying to identify what was going on with my own fish.  Generally speaking though, yes.... add water, add cover, you will have fry.  The main difference between these and something like guppies is purely style and size.

[mynameisnobody]

@gardenman @nabokovfan87 Thank you for the replies. So I was thinking along the lines of either of these (photos courtesy of Dans fish):

Top photo is red cauliflower high fin swordtail and bottom photo is a Berlin Lyretail swordtail. I imagine the red cauliflower is the one that will be much more difficult than the Berlin, but not too sure. Thoughts? 

[gardenman]

There were cancer issues with the half-black swordtails way back in the sixties/seventies/eighties that kept me from ever keeping those. Those swordtails were red on the front half and solid black from the mid-dorsal fin back. I haven't seen those fish in a while, so they may no longer be actively bred and commercially available due to the health concerns. They were beautiful fish, but not very strong. Most recently I was raising Neon Swordtails, and they were extremely prolific and hardy.

The high-fin and long-fin varieties of swordtails are very beautiful, but you typically need to keep a "normal" male to breed with the females due to the elongated and no longer functional gonopodium of the high-fin/long-fin males. Goliad Farms was experimenting with surgically modifying the gonopodiums (hacking off the "excess" with a razor blade) of the long-fin variety to see if they would then reproduce, but I never saw the result of that experiment. I'm guessing it didn't end well. The poor guys went from "Hello ladies, look at what I've got!"  to being nicknamed "Shorty" though no fault of their own. The photo posted above of the gold and black swordtail shows the overly long gonopodium that's the problem with the high-fin/long-fin varieties. The solid red male's gonopodium seems to be less of an issue based on that photo, but we don't see enough to know for sure. A quick search for "Red Lyretail Swordtail Experiment Goliad Farms" should bring up that article if you're interested.

[mynameisnobody]

@gardenman You’re excellence is appreciated. Thank you for your input. 

[AllFishNoBrakes]

I had “troubles” with Platy’s when I first got into the hobby. Not so much trouble as I expected way more fry from what I read. 
 

As soon as I was feeding baby brine shrimp daily that’s when I really got into trouble!

[nabokovfan87]

On 9/24/2023 at 5:49 AM, mynameisnobody said:

Top photo is red cauliflower high fin swordtail and bottom photo is a Berlin Lyretail swordtail. I imagine the red cauliflower is the one that will be much more difficult than the Berlin, but not too sure. Thoughts? 

Either one of those would be non-standard and could produce some different genetic traits. Based on what I know about both of those lines, both should be pretty similar as far as difficulty. I think the first set with the dorsal might require more culling to keep it strong, while the second one would just be a bit more of a mix of genes and give you slightly more variation in patterns.

[Ruud]

I have had them breeding in community tanks, about as easy as guppy's and molly's I would say. Swords are one of my favorite fish, just wish they wouldn't breed non stop. There are some fabulous ones like the Gunteri variant I would love to have. Just not too fond of them continuously breeding as its hard to get rid of fry for me where I live.