Loaches Online Forum

I hope to buy swordtail fish and I do not have any prior experience with this of fish. What should I concern about buying Swordtail fish and how should I take care of them?

Swordtails are fish from the current. They originate from Mexico, where the water is hard, and clear.

Further the males are rather territorial, you either keep 1, or 4 or more. The number of females is not that important, 5 or 6 males is a good combination with 4 females or with 10.

I would assume you know how to distinghuish a male from a female, but some males develop late. Therefore, what appears to be a female might very well be a male. Still, he can be found, if you look from above. Therefore, the best way to get a nice group of swordtails is to net them out, males and females separately, and then sort the true females out looking from above. Females are thicker

What also helps is the anal fin, males have here their gonopodium. When the first finray is thicker, he is developing his gonopodium. Only when this is done will the tail form the sword. THus lack of a sword does not have any meaning. Obviously, from aside you will also be able to see who is thick and who is not.

Temperature - X helerii can be kept at 20 to 24 C, the red swordtails are a hybrid with X maculatus which likes it a bit warmer, 26 C is OK for them.

Lastly, they will eat anything, but will need some vegetarian feed. Flakes are a good food.

Thanks a lot for this information. It seems that buying a group of swordtail fish would be ideal than a few of them as it easy to take care of them than other fish. I was afraid to think about the large groups as I do not know how to take care of them. I was thinking of couple of them. But, now I get a clear idea.

There are a lot of good reasons why one wuld prefer to have a large group. I can only think of three why one would prefer small ones.

The first is the money involved. Obviously sometimes fish are just too expensive to get a lot of them
The second is the size they will reach. I think a large school of oscars would be beautifull. But as they grow to 30 to 35 cm (a foot or more) it would take a swimmingpool to house a school of them.
Lastly, and in this case the most important one, if you are new to keeping fish, you will want to be certain all of them are doing OK. In such a case 20 more or less identical fish can easily drop to 15 or 10 before one notices something is wrong.

But, in case of swordtails, they are mostly not that expensive (there are exceptions), they don't grow that big and, lastly, as the males look way different from the females, in case you would not dare a school larger then 6 identical ones, you can have 12 swordtails.

I was really concerned about the third point, would I be able to take care of them properly as It' not fair get more burden if I'm unable to bear. Anyway, it's not a big deal..I have experience in feeding Goldfish, Guppies, catfish occasionally. Soon, my home aquarium going to be a place for Swordtail fish.