Sexing Swordtails

[dnn3]

when is the earliest you can sex a swordtail?

 

[OldMan47]

At the earliest I would try at about 4 months. If you remove the obvious male at that age, you will often find another developing as soon as the first is gone. You need to be aware that some swordtail males won't show their true gender at much less than a year though.

 

[dnn3]

thank you old man47,you gave me the second opinion i needed.

 

[Jonathangerous]

It really depends on the species. I've found that some, especially a lot of the northerns, take a rather long time to mature.

 

[dnn3]

the reason i asked this question is my friend and his girlfriend set up a ten gal tank for their 6 year old daughter and they wanted some small fish for it,my friends' girlfriend said she used to be a pet store manager and she knew all about fishkeeping.well i have roughly 25 swordtail fry that are about 2 months old so i gave him 3 and told him once we could determine their sex we would switch them out if need be so they would have the proper male to female ratio.i told him this could take quite a while because from my experience swordtails take their sweet time deciding their gender.he called me when he got home and said his girlfriend says they are 3 females,i told him there is no way she could know yet and she says she can tell by their noses.i have posted a pic of my first swordtail fry on here before and he was close to a year old before his sword started to appear.i was positive up until that point that he was a she.i just wanted to reassure my self that i was right and i knew oldman 47 would have the right answer.sorry to ramble on but thanks again oldman47.

 

[fish48]

No way can any one tale there gender by there noses.

 

[OldMan47]

At only 2 or 3 months, every fish in that drop probably looks like a female. Even the former LFS owners are subject to the preconceptions that they got when buying fish by the truckload. I am sure she has paid good money for fish too young to sex and has passed them along based on what she was told. I sometimes count noses in my tanks but have yet to try to judge gender by looking at a nose. The shape of the head andnose, if you want to call it that, can help distinguish a swordtail from a platy or similarly shaped and colored molly but I have never heard of using it to sex a fish.

 

[Denil]

At the earliest I would try at about 4 months. If you remove the obvious male at that age, you will often find a another developing as soon as the first is gone. You need to be aware that some swordtail males won't show their true gender at much less than a year though.

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