tropical fish

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

Developing a Hifin Plumetail Blue Opal Maculatus

Photo: A group of Blue Opal Maculatus Years ago I created what I called a Hifin Blue Opal Maculatus, as its name implies a maculatus-type platy. I wrote about creating this fish for Tropical Fish Hobbyist. To read the TFH article see: ... Read More

Labidochromis caeruleus ‘Gold’

Photo: A male Labidochromis caeruleus ‘Gold’ or ‘Lemon Yellow Lab.’ We raise a lot of African cichlids, especially those from Lake Malawi in East Africa. One of these is very popular with our aquarium maintenance customers due to its bright yellow coloration. This species is Labidochromis ... Read More

Giant Marble Liberty Molly Update

Photo: Our current Giant Marble Liberty Molly breeder male. I originally wrote about this fish in May, 2015 (see my blog http://goliadfarms.com/giant-marble-liberty-mollies/). We have now gone through a couple of additional generations so I’m providing an update on the status of this molly ... Read More

A Gambusia from Big Bend, a New Species?

Photo is a female Gambusia collected in August/September in the Big Bend region of Texas. The author hopes it's a new species. In August and September of 2012 I took two trips out to the Big Bend region of Texas. The first trip was with a daughter, Cara, and a son-in-law, Ky. Ky is the husband of ... Read More

Canary OB Peacock

Photo: A very young (about four months old) male Canary OB Peacock. By the way, while the grid behind him shows one-inch squares, he is not six inches long. He's at the front of the aquarium and the grid is at the back. He's actually only four inches long, barely large enough to reliably determine ... Read More

Acclimation Procedures

Photo is a young male Dragon Blood Peacock Cichlid in a shipping bag. Acclimation Recommendations The principals of Goliad Farms, Inc., after decades of collecting, raising, shipping, transporting and importing tropical fish, have developed methods of acclimation tropical fish. Some of these ... Read More

Non-Gold Dragon Blood Peacock

The photo is of two Non-Gold Dragon Blood Peacock Males. A couple of days ago, I released a blog on Dragon Blood Peacock cichlids (see: http://goliadfarms.com/dragon-blood-peacock-cichlid/), which I had written months ago and had failed to post. This blog is an update on the genetics of the ... Read More