Fry Tank

[Mikaila31]

i am planing to breed lyertail swordtails and endlers . so far i only have one male swordtail and i am waiting for my lps to get more in. My question is what would be the best size tank to raise these fish in i'm thinking that i will have to put a divider in the tank so that the very young endlers don't get eaten by the swordtails. and how many of these fish could be kept in the tank before i have to move some?

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

A 10gal or more would be best for a fry tank, you will need to cycle it and keep it cycled somehow as to now encounter water quality issues(for more info do a search on the forum or check out the pinned articles in the beginner section ), a 10gal fry tank, if it was divided into 5gals each side, could keep say 8 swordtail fry max until they were nearly half grown, while as it could keep quite a few endlers.

 

[corpse fish]

not trying to be rude but:

Most likely he will not be able to reproduce (being a swordtail male though, it won't stop him from trying).

Lyretails are produced by breeding the lyretail females back to either regular finned males or hi fin males. Usually 25-50% of the offspring will be lyretails and the others regular finned. I breed my lyretail females to hi fin males and get roughly 40% lyretails a few hi fin lyretails (for some reason predominately female), one or two hi fins and the remainder regular finned.

 

[Mikaila31]

Yeah i read that post but i don't get why he can't reproduce.

 

[Ddraig Goch]

The extension on the gonopodium causes the male to be unable to breed, I'm afraid I can't get more technical than that, I just read it somewhere. I used to have some too and was very disappointed when I found that out. You could still breed the females with another male, as in the other thread a high fin would be great.

Good luck.

 

[HeatherW]

Hi,

I just thought I'd add that my male lyretail swordtail does attempt to breed with the females, but after a month none of the three females are pregnant.

They were bought from gender separated tanks.

I expect that the super long gonopodium being unable to copulate is true.

I'm waiting for a nice Koi male swordtail to come in now.

Then I'll breed him with the female to maybe get some Koi lyretails.

Anyway, good luck with the fry and getting some nice lyretails from your female.

Heather