About a month and a half ago, we lost our male swordtail to a fungal infection. However, his lady is still pumping out his kids- I woke up this morning and I saw three little sword fry in the grass!
The original 5 are still fine (and all female, which is strange)- the size difference is huge, though. Three of the original five stayed healthy, and at five months old are almost adult size. There is the runt, Johnny 5, who is a little bigger than a rainbow tetra. Then there is Nippy, who time and time again tried to pick a fight with her larger siblings and time and time again got nipped for it. While her tail mended she grew more slowly, so she's about female guppy size and I'm not sure she's still growing.
There were also a surprise sixth and seventh fry (each one the lone survivor of their respective litters), but at some point this week the younger one disappeared.
Now I see three more sword fry- hoo-boy, so many fish!
When they reach full size, the three large girls will go to an
LFS I trust- I will probably keep the runts myself, but in a 10 gallon (which I need to pick up from the LFS). I'm up to 9 sword fry now, and there will probably be more coming, as the sword girl can have fry up to six more times after the male leaves.
