Red/gold hifin lyre tail sword pair....

[Mugwump]

These are as pretty as I've seen in a long time. They're 4"+ overall length and beautiful to watch...keepers, yep... ...can't wait to see the fry...she's pudgy right now...

[PaulineMi]

I had them in the past. Absolute elegance.

[Mugwump]

Here's a pic....that's a large sponge and a 55gal......for comparison....they're bigger than the pic makes them to be...

[ilroost]

WOW!!. THEY LOOK GREAT

[BillT]

They are nice looking fish. I had some like that when I was a kid and bred a lot of swordtails.

Back then I read (and experienced) that these lyretail fish are difficult to breed because of the overly long gogpodium of the males making normal fertilization not easy (or maybe not possible).
Apparently, they could be bred when young before the male's gognopoium got so long.

More recently (in TFH I think) I have read about how sperm can be collected from males and used to fertilize females.

If your female is already pregnant, than hopefully you can get several spawnings from the stored sperm.


When I was young I used to think this sperm storing trick was cool and useful, but now that I occasionally want to do specific genetic crosses, I am annoyed because it requires getting virgin females (same as in fruitflies by the way) to really know what you are getting.

[Mugwump]

The guy that raises these lives about 12 miles from us. He raises a lot of these...grows them out in 55's....some sre huge...

[PaulineMi]

What I liked about them was that even though the male couldn't reproduce he was constantly showing off for the female and he was a beautiful fish.