Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => General Fishkeeping advice => Topic started by: Richard W on November 13, 2014, 11:46:06 AM
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I'm not keen on livebearers myself, but guppies seem vey popular, platies (in spite of many problems, it seems) and mollies are still pretty popular. But what happened to swordtails? Going back to my youth, these were at least as plentiful as platies, but I hardly see a mention of them now. Does anybody still keep them? Why are platies more popular?
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Possibly because platys and guppies are what the ' well informed' shop staff force on a number of people getting their first fish?!
FC76
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Platies are slightly smaller and males don't seem to have the aggression that swordtail males do. Maybe that's why shops push platies instead.
But the platies around these days are all hybrids with a lot of swordtail in them. I wonder if this hybridisation has produced a lot of swordless swordtails which are passed off as platies.
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Having recently got my first tropical tank, I went with Platies due to their supposed peaceful nature (not that peaceful in my opinion), hardiness (no problems there yet) and their suitability to a wide range of water parameters. Swordtails are more attractive IMO but require a much larger tank and are supposedly more aggressive. Still plenty of Swordtails in the stores though, and worrying I was told they'd be fine in my 55L Aquanano 40...