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This video shows several Sword Tails living in an aquarium with lots of live aquatic plants. You can see at least two mature males with
swords on the end of their tails. Mature females don't have swords.
Here is a young male Swordtail nibbling on the algae growing on a Aponogeton Plant.
This video shows a young male Red Velvet
Swordtail.
A male Neon Wag Tail Sword.
A Swordtails with a black tail is called a Wag Tail.
A male Neon Swordtail.
Scientific Name. Xiphophorus helleri.
The video above shows a mature male Neon Swordtail. You can see his sword projecting to the left from the bottom of his tail
fin. Male Swordtails develop swords as they mature but females do not develop swords on their fins. This makes it very easy to tell a mature male Sword Tail from a mature female.
Click here
to go to another page in
this web site with more
information about Pet Fish
Talk.
Comments
Swordtails are available in many color varieties. Swordtails are livebearers like Guppies, Mollies, and Platies. Swordtails are easy to breed,
though not quite as easy as Mollies. Click
here for more about breeding Mollies and raising the babies.
Here is a male Sword Tail just like the Sword Tails for sale at our online tropical fish store. We have many different kinds of Swords.
Click here to see the list with many kinds of Sword Tails for sale from us.
Here is
a picture of a beautiful male Sword Tail. This variety of Sword Tail is called a Red Sword Tail, but you can see he is really
bright orange and not red. There are really dark red Sword Tails.
The white arrow in this picture points at this young male Swordtail's gonopodium, which is a modified fin that females do not have. This
male's sword is just beginning to develop at the end of his tail.
Here is
a picture of a beautiful female Sword Tail. You can see that she does not have a sword, and you can see that she does not have a
gonopodium like the male in the picture above her.
Appropriate Home
In an aquarium with at least 15 gallons of water, an
External Power
Filter with a BIO-Wheel, 1/4 inch or less of
gravel, and an
Aquarium
Heater adjusted to between 78 and 82 degrees F. Click
here for more about warm water aquariums. Like most livebearers Swordtails will do better with 1 Tablespoon of Aquarium Salt per 5 gallons of water. Click
here
for more about Aquarium Salt.
Recommended Diet
Floating
flake food plus freeze dried
blood worms, which are
actually mosquito larvae. Both of these foods are sold in most stores
that sell pet fish. Click
here for more about feeding fish. I feed all livebearers a few Black Worms every other day. Click
here for more about Black
Worms.
Compatibility
Like all livebearers Swordtails live best in a group with a few male Swordtails and several females. Swordtails are good tank mates for
Mollies,
Platies,
Angels,
Corydoras Catfish,
Plecostomus,
and Bigger Tetras such as Black Skirts, Red Serpaes, and Silver Tips. Click
here to read more about several other groups of compatible fish.
Size and Life Span
Swordtails have a life span of 3 to 5 years and can grow to 5". Sometimes they have lived longer and grown bigger.
Books about Swordtails
The books shown below are listed on Amazon.com. You can click on the title or on the image of a book to go to the page at Amazon.com, where that book is listed and discussed. In some
cases you can preview several of the pages in that book.
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