Is My Swordtail Pregnant?

[Guppy Goon]

I have had my female swordtail (Tigger) for quite some time now (over 4 months) She is in the tank with two male swordfish and she has not yet produced any fry. But she has a dark gravid spot, but it has always been dark. Please can anyone tell me why that might be? Thanks

 

[fluttermoth]

The so-called 'gravid spot' is no use at all in indicating pregnancy.

Do you know what kind of swordtails they are? Lyretail and high finned males are sometimes unable to breed because the gonopodium is too long.

Other possibilities are that; either your males or your female are infertile for some reason, or that she is too young yet (although that seems unlikely if you've had her four months), or that she is having fry but they're being eaten before you see them.

I've moved your threads to the livebearer section for you

 

[Guppy Goon]

Oh, thank you x

 

[Guppy Goon]

She has suddenly changed shape, she is more boxy shaped and fatter, is she pregnant? And if she is, is she going to drop soon?

 

[fluttermoth]

Yes; once they develop that 'boxy' look (which is called 'squaring off' in livebearer breeding ) they normally give birth within the next couple of days

 

[Nenana]

Hello,
I do not want to start a new topic because I am in the same boat with you. So we think our swardtail is pregnant. I can`t tell if she is squared or not but she is muuuch bigger than she was. When I look from above I can see her belly like a ball shaped and then when you look at her on the side she just grew bigger in size. Got wider than she was. Anyways my husband says he can see the fry eyes in her black spot. I have never been able to see this but I trust him. She is not very dark and I am sure he sees better than I do. Anyways we have 2 male guppies in the tank that are "in love" with that female for no particular reason, especially the yellow one is super insisting and dancing around her constantly. She doesn`t seem to care. But he is after her 24/7 never away, the other one doesn`t bother her that much I think he just looks what the yellow guy is doing and follows the example. There is at least 4 other female fish in the tank /no guppies cause the yellow guy killed some female once so we moved him away for punishment/ but they do not pay attention to any other fish but the sward tail. And then we got the male sward tail as well, he does not chase the female every day like the guppy does but once in a while /looks like when we do water change/ he gets very active around her. So thats why I think she is pregnant. Now we got that breeder box, my husband wanted to put her in it right away. However I am not sure if she won`t get too stressed out and how long can I keep her in there. So my first question is how long can she stay in this box, it looks to tiny and my female is almost as big as my index finger. We do not want to leave her in the fish tank to have babies because I think the male guppy will eat them and won`t even let her have a normal birth, also we have a huge balloon molly who is always hungry. We have lots of plants but so far in this fish tank we found only 5 fry and we have it for at least 2 months so I know the rest of the fish will eat the babies. I wonder if we put her in that breeder box and the guppy is not after her if that will help her have the babies sooner. I can`t tell if she is square or no at all haha. I read a lot of stuff so I am thinking to turn off the light of the fish tank /I usually do that night time and the guppies sleep and leave her alone so she won`t get stressed out from the in general/ And I guess we can try her for 24 hours, but I dont want to let her free and than have to put her back in there, so not to stress her out. So very confused about that. Also her black spot is actually kind of red and brown not like a guppy is. So my questions are if I put her in that box how long I can keep her in there and the other thing I was wondering is after she is done should I release her right away or keep her in there for a day so she can recover. I know the guppy guy will get on her the moment she is back in the tank. She really does not mind him, she never swims away from him or avoids him she is usually busy picking on stuff from the bottom and eating and he is dancing around her it is very funny. But I don`t want her to get super stressed out and I don`t want anything bad to happen to her. Another question is when the fry is here should I keep it in a breeders box or move it to the nursery tank with the older fry we have. Are they good swimmers when newborn because our filter in there makes a light current and the guppy babies seem to be fine with it but our molly sometimes seems to be moved around by it. I do not want to keep them in breeders net we had 15 like that and now when I moved them to the nursery tank there is only 9 left and they are tiny although a month old.
Thanks for reading this I hope I can read some opinions

 

[Guppy Goon]

Can I just say, my Swordtail didn't turn out to be pregnant, se had a server illness, although we are not sure what it was. It caused her scales to stick up and bloated her stomach. It was awful when we found her dead

 

[lolobunnz]

That would be dropsy. So sorry to hear about your loss :'(.