Photo: A young, three to four month old, male Xiphophorus alvarezi. Xiphophorus alvarezi, the Chiapas Swordtail, is a wild swordtail species from, remarkably enough considering its name, the Mexican state of Chiapas. We acquired this species in the auction at the April 2012 Fort Lauderdale ... Read More
swordtail
Fancy Red Tuxedo Swordtails
Photo: Female Red Tuxedo Lyretail Swordtail. As is typical of our strain, females don’t have as bright red coloration as males. We’ve started working on adding three fancy fin types, lyretail, hifin, and plumetail to each of our commercial swordtail, maculatus, and variatus lines. I’m going to ... Read More
Orange Freckled Swordtails
Photo above is a male Orange Freckled Swordtail. The grid behind him is in inches and shows his size. Those of you who have read many of my past articles and blogs know that a common theme throughout my writings is serendipity (could also be called “luck”). This interesting fish arose from a ... Read More
Introducing a Dominant Gene
Photo: A male Hifin Redwag Swordtail. I’m beginning a blog series on introducing new genes (technically alleles, but I’ll bow to common usage) into a xiphophorine population. In this blog I’ll discuss the mechanics of introducing a single dominant gene into a xiphophorine population. By the way, ... Read More
Red Freckled Hifin Swordtail
Photo: A first generation Red Freckled Hifin Swordtail male in front of one inch grid to show size. Okay, it’s going to take a while to untangle the genealogy of this fish. Let’s take the female first. The pictured female is large. She's in front of a one-inch grid that shows she almost ... Read More
Blue Iridescent Swordtail
Photo: An early male Blue Iridescent Swordtail used in the development of the strain. We raise a variety of commercial swordtails. While these fish closely resemble the shape of the wild swordtail Xiphophorus hellerii, they are hybrid strains with genes from other Xiphophorus species such as X. ... Read More
Giant Redtail Blue Variatus
Photo: Pair of Giant Redtail Blue Variatus and male regular Redtail Blue Variatus Xiphophorus species, which include swordtails, maculatus platies, and variatus platies, hybridize readily. A while back I wrote, when I was writing for Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine, an article about some hybrids ... Read More
Red Sailfin Molly
The photo shows two juvenile Red Sailfin Mollies (above) and a red Swordtail/Platy hybrid (below, for color contrast). I continue to work on new molly strains. For a long time now I’ve wanted to develop a Red Sailfin Molly. I’ve tried various crosses with no discernible progress. Then, about a ... Read More
Red Lyretail Swordtail Experiment
One problem with raising lyretail swordtails is that the males are functionally sterile. While they produce viable sperm, they have an elongated gonopodium (a penis-like modified anal fin used to inject sperm into the female), which prevents them from mating. Lyretail in xiphophorines (members of ... Read More
Xiphophorus mayae
The photo is of an adult male Xiphophorus mayae. This is a wild swordtail species we acquired in 2012 at the American Livebearer Association (ALA) convention auction in Fort Lauderdale. ALA’s annual convention auction offers a great chance of picking up unusual and rare livebearers. The 2014 ... Read More