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Free fish!

2K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  AaronCombs 
#1 ·
Alright so I totally scored about 25 swordtail's today.

However, I have stipulations which I will abide by. lol...

The lot is that of fully mature females/males, with young that range in age. The original owner had started with 4 and it increased to nearly 50, so he gave me half.

My stipulations are that I give them away to those who couldn't afford fish.

SO here's what I'm thinking... I setup a 15 gal tank, remember atleast 16 of the 25 I have are not full grown yet nor are they even 1 inch... Yeah i know it's over populated, but no worries, My 100 gal is not over pop and will take the overflow once quarantine time is over.

So here is my thought, get in touch with families who can't afford them, via say Habitat for Humanity.... I'm a volunteer so it wouldn't be hard. Find someone who will donate a tank setup or partial setups and I mix and match to get it working.

Once I have the swordtails breeding and popping out young ones, I'll start giving them away. In turn creating a nice cycle of free fish to supply people with.



However I have a drawback... I'm not the best when it comes to knowledge on sword tails. So if you know something i should know, when it comes to them, please let me know. I am aware they can 'jump' out of the tank... so I'm working on fixing that issue.


Oh yeah before I forget, the tank they are in has java moss (the owner provided a decent yield for me)... and he supplied one other kind of plant, young and small... dunno what it is right now, to small for me to tell. However I did plant some of my own plants in the tank about a week ago to help keep it balanced.


Anyways all thoughts are appreciated. oh and water levels and what not are at normal range for swordtails, already checked through all that. :)
 
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#2 ·
Sword tails are livebearers, and most livebearers have several requirements that MUST be met for them to mate and have offspring survive.

1. You must have males and females.
2. They can't be in complete darkness.
3. You have to feed them.

That's about it. Feed'em regular flake food with the occasional protien/live food snack, keep'em in alkaline water (helps their health, although my guppies are in a PH of 6 and breeding like underwater bunnies... Not saying do that tho. :))

When you give the fish away, do make sure you only give males away. People who don't know a lot about fish won't realise when their tank is overcrowded... Then fish will die, and they're turned off to aquariums. :/

Too bad they're swordtails... swordtails need space... If it was something like a guppy or platy, you could put 1 or 2 in a 1 gallon jar with a ton of plants, and tell them to put it somewhere it gets sunlight, but won't get a draft.

Good idea though. :)
 
#3 ·
Hmm that will be intersting idea lol... with the platy.
I guess it depends on what all is donated.

I'll keep that in mind about giving them all males lol.

I'm starting to take applicants for these buggers, but I can't give them away unless they have a setup or one is donated, So i'm checking around.
 
#5 ·
I think the only tanks I am accepting as donations are 5gal + ... to avoid that lol. However if a family requested a smaller one I dunno. I'd have to go over all those details.
 
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