# Swordtail releasing fry!



## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

One of my swordtails is releasing her fry right now! :hbd: I noticed that she was about to release them, so I ran to Wal-Mart and bought a 10 gallon. About 20 min after I put her in, she started to release the fry!

I don't have any breeder grass, so I took a bunch of plastic plants and put them in the tank with her. I also put two fish nets in the corners, which the fry seem to like to hide behind.

The mother looks a bit stressed, which I assume is normal. I am trying to keep her as calm as possible so she doesn't die from stress. 

I should stop writing now and go make sure she is doing well, and not eating her fry :grin:


----------



## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

OK she started releasing fry at about 1 AM. It is now 8:30 AM. She still looks square. There is a number of fry swimming around the tank. She no longer looks interested in eating the fry. Should she be done now? It seems like a long time for her to still be releasing fry.


----------



## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Sometimes swordtails can drop well over 100 fry at a time, and that tends to take awhile.


----------



## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

Yeah I suppose it would. I have heard that they can drop that many too, I guess I thought it wouldn't take that long to do it though. Also the gravid spot is no longer dark, but she is still square and fat.


----------



## WeedCali (Nov 28, 2009)

congrats!

got any pics so far?


----------



## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

No pics yet, but I will get some soon. 

The Hikari First Bites package says to feed them very little food, but as often as possible. Is this good? I fed them 4 times today and I will one more time before I go to bed.

I did a quick count of the fry. I see about 8 of them. I think that is OK since I had nothing to really protect the fry other than a few plastic plants. A few of them are almost completely black and the rest look like they will be like the mother, orange body with black tails. I do have a completely black male fish that could have been the father, so maybe thats where the black ones came from.

I put the mother back into the main tank. She looked a bit stressed at first, and the other swordtails picked on her for a few minutes. But they stopped picking on her and now she looks just fine. The thing that scares me now, is the other female looks gravid XD


----------



## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

I bought a breeder box for the other swordtail. Hopefully I get more alive ones with the box than I did without it.


----------



## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

OK so I got some pics, but I wont post them. Most of them are fuzzy. The fry are small, in an aquarium, and move, so it is hard to take pictures of them.

I did take a video of them. The video is fairly fuzzy itself but there are a few good shots in it. You may want to turn your sound down since the camera picked up the sound of the air pump way louder than it really is. 

[yt]17lTlukQRF8[/yt]


----------



## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

Don't forget about the tank cycling!
Those guys are cute and they actually look quite large compared to some fry I have seen.
The colors are nic too.
Sometimes it is better to have a few larger fry rather than 50-60 real tiny ones. Feed them as often as you can in small amounts. Make sure there is only a few bits of food left on the bottom of the tank, otherwise you may have it go moldy or spike the ammonia.
Fry often sort through the gravel looking for bits of food.


----------



## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

They are quite large now. They were microscopic when they were born and now have grown a bunch. I found one in the air powered filter I had when I changed the water today. It is a bit smaller than the other 6. 

As you can see from the video, there is no gravel for them to pick through. There is just a bit of sand from the trays on the bottom of the fake plants I had in there while they were being born. 

I am also treating the tank with Stability so the ammonia levels cant get too high.


----------



## Obsidian (May 20, 2007)

Hey congratulations. They are cute!!!


----------



## balloon molly (Oct 25, 2009)

That's really intresting... How old are the parents?


----------



## balloon molly (Oct 25, 2009)

How adorable, and congratulations, What color were the parents? They kind of remind me of sunburst platy fry even though they are swordtails...
Good Luck!


----------



## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

I don't have pictures of the parents yet, but a search on google helped me find a few that look like mine.

Female: 









Male:









I don't know how old they are since I bought them fully mature.


----------



## StripesAndFins (Dec 31, 2008)

Congrats bmlbytes  Good luck raising them


----------



## Obsidian (May 20, 2007)

I think those are called Micky Mouse variety, but I am not sure.


----------



## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

A mickey mouse looks like this because of the black color pattern on the tail.


----------



## Obsidian (May 20, 2007)

ooooooooooooooooooo. Thanks BML! Now I "get" it. I always just thought it was because the tails were black, didn't realize there was a pattern involved and that solid black is something else. I like learning things so thanks for that


----------

