Stocking w/ Swordtails... ?

[Hotelboy]

Hey all, first post in a few years w/ new user name (you probably don't remember my old one)

I'm refilling my 36 gallon bowfront (its been empty for too long) and am going to use either neon tetra's or swordtails as my main school of fish. If I go with swordtails, I'll probably have about 14 or 16. If Tetras, probably 30.

Question, would it be better to stock equal amounts of male and female swordtails or 2 males and the rest female or vice versa?

If I go with Neons, you can't really tell the sex anyways so whatever.

Any advice from people with previous experience with a tank full o' swords is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[JustOneMore20]

Ok swordtails are not schooling, so there is no need to have 14. Actually I wouldn't have more than 6 in that size tank. They get pretty big (~3in) and will have babies everywhere and overstock the tank. If they are your main fish, I'd stick with 6 (3f/3m) and then have a school of tetras.

If you only want the one school of tetras, you could have 12-14, but no more than that. 30 would be way overstocked IMO. Then get some bottom fishies and maybe a pair of rams or a gourami.

If you only want the swordtails, plus some bottom fish, then maybe you could increase it to 8 (5f/3m), but thats as high as I would go. You risk overstocking when you add more...especially when adding more females to the mix.

 

[rich311k]

I think 8-10 swords would be fine. Try for a 1 - 3 ratio between males and females. If you don't want babies get all males. You don't want a 50 -50 ratio the males will drive on the females and wear them out.

I have read that female neons are a bit bigger than males but I have never been able to tell and it doesn't matter anyway.

 

[fish_4_all]

6-8 swords, 2 males only. I breed them all the time and if there is more than 2 males they will chase each other and eventually kill one or each other. You will have more than you can handle in little time anyway. If you have plants then 3 males may work so they have a place to hide from each other. 3:1 is a good ratio but so the males don't kill each other and pester the females to death for mating rights.

 

[JustOneMore20]

I think 8-10 swords would be fine. Try for a 1 - 3 ratio between males and females. If you don't want babies get all males. You don't want a 50 -50 ratio the males will drive on the females and wear them out.

I don't keep swords so I have no idea what they are like. I just know livebearers make lots of babies....thats why I have no interest in keeping them.

 

[Alshain]

Like they said, a male will overly stress a single female, furthermore, multiple males will fight if there are too many in a confined space and not enough females. For your size tank I would say no more than 2 males and 3 females per. In smaller tanks you can get away with 2 females per but only with a single male. If there are no females present however, males will be completely docile so you could go all male or all female if you don't intend to breed.


Judging by your surface area, you can fit roughly 48 inches of fish in that tank based on this chart. Swordtails do get between 3 and 4 inches so you can't put 14 in that small a tank I'm afraid. But you could probably get a small school of neons mixed with the swordtails. In that case I would reccomend 2 male 6 females and a large school of regular neons or a small school of jumbo neons. Less neons if you would like to put in some bottom feeders.

Swordtails are wonderful fish and the color varieties make a swordtail tank very nice. I would reccomend for your own enjoyment to get only one of each color variety you get. As for color varieties, I prefer Red Wag, Koi (kinda higher priced), Pineapple, and Marigold. There are many many kinds though so have fun with it and don't get all the same kind (they would probably end up being siblings anyway which is bad for breeding). Just FYI, the one in my avatar is a pineapple, they are the best of all of them IMO.

FYI, you can substitute Platies for swordtails as well. WHen judging male and female, add them to the swordtails count. They are so similar of fish that they will even breed together.

 

[Tostada]

The males are the ones that actually have the ... err ... "sword" on their tail, right?

If swords can breed with platies, what do those males look like?

 

[Alshain]

Yes this is true to a point. (no pun intended)

The more accurate way to to determine sex is by the anal fin, not only does this work for swordtails but also platies which don't have the sword extension. If the anal fin is cylidrical then it is male (and is called a gonopodium). The gonopodium is actually what is used to fertilize the female in livebearers. If however the anal fin is fan shaped, it is female.

The reason this is a better method is because the gonopodium will turn cylindrical long before the male starts to grow out his sword extension. All livebearers start out looking like females.

Sordtails do make an excellent way to practice determining sex because you can find one with a sword extension (guarunteed to be male) and compare his anal fin with what you think is female.

 

[Hotelboy]

Thanks guys.

I've had experience w/ the swords and neons before. I really just couldn't remember the temperment of the swords and what ratio I should use. 3:1 Female:Male seems to be the consensus. As far as over stocking, I'm running an Eheim 2026 so I shouldn't really have any problems. But since all my freshwater experience is with fully planted presurised tanks, I'll probably take my stocking slowly. I really don't know how much this tank will handle without the added benifits of the plants.

Thanks again

 

[Alshain]

Overfiltration does not compensate for over stocking. While you may have more surface area for bacteria, filters do not remove nitrates. Your bacteria may be able to grow to compensate for the ammonia and nitrite but you will never be able to compensate for the nitrate buildup using over filtration. You could do more frequent water changes to compensate but I don't reccomend it because if you miss one water change your tank could die quickly.

In the long run, it is never reccomended to overstock regardless of filtration or maintanence.

 

[JustOneMore20]

My reason of saying no to 16 swordtails wasn't just overstocking, but overcrowding as well. The filtration won't do much for overcrowding. I'd make sure the fish have some room to swim around comfortably.

 

[Elmware2000]

I totally agree with fish_4_all. If I have too many males in the tank, they do chase each other, and sometimes one will get to the point where he's so afraid to come out and eat that he gets weak. I had to put one in another tank to get him out of a bad situation.

I also recommend 3 females for each male because they do harrass the females.

They say they grow to 3". I swear mine are more like 4-5". Especially the females. They get quite big.

They breed worse than rabbits. Even the guppies don't keep up with these guys. Nice fish though. I have Marigold Swordtails. The fish store down the street is more than happy to trade babies for fish, plants or bloodworms.

 

[Alshain]

They say they grow to 3". I swear mine are more like 4-5". Especially the females. They get quite big.

I've found different types of swordtails get different sizes. For example, I've never seen a koi swordtail > 2" but Pineapples and Marigolds get up to 4" or even 5"

 

[Hotelboy]

Thanks guys,

I forgot to consider overcrowding versus bioload. I used to really like my red wag and marigold swords because of how active they were. But I've pretty much decided to switch breeds though. I really prefer the look of a school, so I'm going to try my hand at Gold Tetra's again (cause everyone has neons). Considering the flow that comes out of my filter, its probably better to go with a river species that likes swimming into a current.

Time to start cycling my tank.