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Acidental breeding questions

1K views 3 replies 3 participants last post by  kald 
#1 ·
Hello. Well, I'll start my question out by saying that my cable and internet went out last night so I spent over an house just staring at my fish last night. With that out of the way, I have four neon sword tails in my tank. Two I purchased at the store, and two that were born in my tank. I do know that they are live bearing fish. My question is do live bearing fish (for lack of a better term) have sex? I know that with egg laying fish the semen is just kind of spread around the area of the eggs. But last night in my ultimate bordum (I should have been cleaning the house or something) I saw the store bought male and female "wrestleing around". But it wasn't the normal kind of fighting that I see with the other fish, no poking with the nose or chasing around the tank. This time they were up near the top, side by side and sometimes belly to belly. It went on for around 10 minutes on and off. Were they mating?
 
#2 ·
Probably. They sort of look like they are wrapping around each other and do kind of look like they are fighting. Do you know if you have males and females? Males have pointy anal fins while the females have fan-shaped anal fins. Just be aware that the females do store sperm for months, and from a single mating, they can have a batch of fry every month for several months. I believe it took about 6 months for my female mollies to finally stop having babies after I removed the male.
 
#3 ·
Yeah I have two males and two females. The males have long orange sword with black outlining, impossible to miss them. When I originaly got the fish I had two females, one did have the stored sperm. The store bought male has been in the tank around 5 or 6 months and this is the first time I've seen this. The other male and female came from that pregnant one that didn't survive past a few months in the tank.
 
#4 ·
Nice, I love neon swords! I am currently breeding neon swords with highfin swords to try creating a nice variety.

The platy and the swordtail are livebearers, yes. The males have the long, pointed fin (called a gonopodium) that is jabbed into the female, inseminating her.
 
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