Help needed! Is my swordtail pregnant?

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british_bulldog

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
2
hiya, i'm a newbie to this i've just set up a couple of tropical aquariums and i bought 2 swordtails 1 male 1 female from my local store, now i am wondering if my female is pregnant, i think she is, she has the darkish spot (i think) and she is bigger than the male (well her tummy is) but i dont know if this is down to just food, and if she is pregnant would it be ok to seperate her to a different tank till she's had the fry?

Thanx

Michael
 
well if its food, the tummy size should go down. also, im not possitive, but i beleive the females are a lil more plump than the males. do a quick google. you should find the answer pretty quickly.
 
If she's been in contact with a male, then she is almost definitely pregnant. Livebearers are the rabbits or mice of the fish world. They're always pregnant. If you want to raise the fry then separating her would be necessary, although I'd wait until she's really fat so she's not in isolation for too long (it's about 4 weeks between batches of babies). However, do keep in mind that she will continue to have babies every 4 weeks or so as long as the male is around, and she can have a lot of babies each time. You need to decide if you want to devote a lot of time and space to raise them, as well as find homes for them, or just leave her in the main tank and let nature take its course. If your tank is heavily planted and lightly stocked some of the "smart" babies may make it anyway. Or you could raise one batch for the fun of it (it is fun, baby fish are cute lil buggers) but leave the rest to nature.
 
Thanx for the advice, her tummy seems to have gone down abit anyway but yea she was in contact with males in the petshop and i bought her and a male the only thing i'm abit concerned about is she had whitespot a day or two after i got her came from the pet shop! so im abit worried she may have lost them or absorbed them, i do have a second tank setup well sorry a fourth :-D but i've kept that empty for breeding as i do fancy having a go at it and the pet shop i got her from buy them back anyway so they'll always have a home!

:n00b:

thanx
 
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