I'm a fairly new member of the ALA, but a longtime (42 years- gulp) aquarist. A big part of the livebearer hobby for me is the opportunity to keep wild-types. I was a weird kid who really looked at the fish in aquarium stores years ago, and the loss of variety in forms brought by successful line-breeding continually strikes me. I'm kind of fascinated by the 'ordinary'. It took me a couple of years to track down wild-type helleri. I have wild-type mollies, and guppies collected in Trinidad. What I have not seen outside of the Xiphophorus stock center listing is wild-type X maculatus or X variatus.
I love my evelynae and birchmani, and I can hunt for Goodeid species with the best of them, but other than the maculatus that swam by me in Belize, I have never seen wild-type platy forms. Just out of curiosity, are there any ALAers keeping these apparently very uncommon 'common' livebearer species? I'm not even angling for someone to sell and ship me some, I'm genuinely curious about the interest in wild-form platys.

Gary,

For some reason Wild forms of X.Maculatus and X.Variatus aren't being kept and sold by very many people (As far as I know) Years ago (late 1980's- early 1990's), Dominic Isla sent me a pure Wild X.Variatus male with a
Black gonopodium because I had mentioned to him that I had never seen the Black Bottom form of X.Maculatus and he figured since I am a breeder/ developer of Fancy Xiphophorus I could use these males to produce my own strain. I had so many projects going in a very small fish room that I ended up selling the male to a friend who, I think lost him before breeding him.
Your best bet is to contact the XGSC or you might try contacting Rich Serva (he might be able to steer you toward some pure Wild X.Maculatus and X.Variatus.
Even though I love and known for Fancy Xiphophorus, I also appreciate the Wild forms and have kept some species in the past.

Darrell E. Mefford

I have kept them recently, but lost them during a power cut that most people now know about.

The first photo is X. maculatus from Belize.



The second is X. variatus from Laguna.