Red Sword

[Melita]

Hi I have sword tail babies and i cant realy till yet what colours or weather they are male or female anyone have any sugestion ?. Right now they just look kinds brown no particular colour .

 

[ewooten78]

how old are they? usually you cant tell when they are small. i have platys and mollies that are a month and a half old and they are still to small to tell.

 

[OldMan47]

At almost 2 years of age and about 3 inches of body length, 7 cm, my wild type swordtails are starting to finally show me that they are all males. I do not keep domesticated swordtails due to personal preferences. One of the challenges of swordtails in general is that males can be driven by their surroundings to try to hide their gender from the other fish. That means that it can easily take well over a year to find out that the female that never seems to produce fry is really a male. My X. helleri are about 18 months to 2 years old by my estimates, I got them at an auction as juveniles, and they are just now starting to show me that they are all males. Some still have a sword that is less than 1 cm in length and just a hint of a gonopodium while the earlier developers, 6 to 8 months ago, have swords well over 5 cm and a fully developed gonopodium. None of the fish looked like anything but females for almost the first full year of their lives.

 

[kribensis12]

I raised some swordtail fry a few years ago. By 6 months several were showing a gonopodium and hints of a sword. It really depends on the fish. You will have a few males start to show signs early, but the rest will show signs several months later. The reason being that is because the rest of the males attempt to look like female so they aren't bullied by the dominant males.