Popular name Swordtail Characin. Origin Trinidad, Colombia, Venezuela. Size 2-2 1/2 inches. Appearance A cream-colored fish with rather long translucent fins. Behaviour, Feeding An undemanding peaceful species of interesting breeding behavior. Will take dried foods but needs a reasonable amount of live or fresh foods. Sexing The male has a peculiar, long, oarlike or spoonlike extrusion from the gill cover which extends halfway down the body. Its fins are longer and the lower lobe of the caudal is elongated. Hence the popular name Swordtail Characin. Breeding This is fairly easy but what happens during the mating act is as yet uncertain. The male approaches the female and extends his gill appendages so that they stand off at right angles to the body. The female sometimes turns around to snap at one of them. It is believed that at this stage the male somehow transfers a package of sperms (spermatophores) into the oviduct of the female. Once the female is fertilized in this fashion she will go on delivering fertile eggs for many months or even the rest of her life without further assistance from the male. This is a fairly easy fish to breed and is not . critical of water requirements. About 100 eggs are laid and the female looks after them and transfers them from leaf to leaf. The male should be removed after spawning; the female when the fry becomes free swimming.Recommended feeding system Aquaze tropical .

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Fish Feeding Systems, Tetras, Tropical Fish . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.