Taking Care Of Swordtails

I thought fish would be relatively easy. They don't need attention. All you need to go on vacation is one of those tablet things. And Swordtails specifically are about as easy as goldfish or betas, they just need more filtration and heating.

But it turns out anything that doesn't breathe air like me is, in fact, very difficult.

I've had swordtails for coming up on two years now. I started out with two males, which leads us to Tip #1: Don't put two males together. Sometimes you can, but more often than not, one of them will assume the dominant role and harass the other one. Sad, because the males are the prettier ones of the species, but true.

But I did. And one of the first times I was cleaning out the tank, I put them together in a bowl. Which leads us to Tip #2: Cover whatever you have them in when they're out of the tank. Poor Hokaido, a beautiful orange gold male, was being harassed by his tank mate while in the bowl, and jumped out, plummeting the carpet four feet below. He lived, but only for about an hour.

I still have nightmares.

So now I cover the bowl they go in during cleaning with a magazine or even a piece of paper.

Which leads us to cleaning. I hate to clean their tank, and I've found (Tip #3) that I can get away with doing it less often if I'm vigilant about changing the filter.

But when you do clean (Tip #4) never take out more than 50% of the water. Always leave the gravel in. There is a certain amount of bacteria that the fish need. And when you put them back in, don't freak if they just sit there stunned for a bit. It's unnerving, but that's what they do.

Oh, those fish will be the death of me.