Well, these swords really don't make the best of community fish, they are much better off in their own tank. The ones I keep look the same except most don't have quite as long dorsal fins and they also have lyertails. I've tried to keep them in community tanks before and always ran into problems, mainly because of all their fins
. You might have better luck since yours don't have as much finage. Some problems I had: if the current was too strong the fish would get too tired and rest on the bottom a lot. Their fins are very tempting targets for nipping, even fish that don't normally nip. Plastic plants and other things will easily tear their fins up, some get tears from being caught with a net. Mine would have trouble with food competion too.
The one I first tried to keep in a community tank made around 6 trips to the hospital tank in a year for various reasons. She would bounce back very quickly in the hospital tank, which was a bare bottom 15gal tank she had all to herself. She never developed any problems when she was in the hospital tank and when I would move her back to the community tank she would be fine for a couple of weeks before something else happened. Until one time she wasn't able to recover
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The best bet is that if you put him back in there the same thing is going to happen again. If you want to keep them with fish, you basically have to design the tank around them. The best thing to do is first to stick with fish that stay much smaller than the sword. Some fish that should work may not, its basically a test you add the fish and if they bother the swords you remove them. Its still much more difficult to keep them in a community tank then on their own.
Here is a video of the sword, that I tried to keep in a community tank, recovering from some minor fin damage in the quarantine tank. I really like these fish, since they look so pretty. But there are many days where I feel sorry for them. The sword in the video would start to struggle with a moderate current. I toyed with the idea of trimming her fins to get rid of some of the weight/drag they created, but in the end I never tried it. If I could go back I would definetly keep her on her own.
