Some things will never cease to amaze me. I just read an article on swordtails and platys in the new issue of Aquarium Fish Magazine. In one section the author talks about sex reversal in swordtails and how it is common in females around four to five months old. He goes on to say, "These individuals will be sexually productive females that undergo sex reversal four to five months after birth have been found to be the most prolific." To me and I am sure many others what he is saying is that the fish are females and they go through a sex change to become males. I think we all know about late developing males. Although they may develope late they never had ovaries or a womb so they were never females in reality. He also goes on to talk about brine shrimp eggs by saying,"Play it safe and eliminate the chance of disease through itroduction of live food. Decapsulating brine shrimp eggs removes all of the known parasites and pathogens, effectively sterelizing the eggs. To decapsulate them, administer a 10-minute freshwater bath and then rinse them thoroughly through a 100 micron strainer." As far as I know there are no pathogens or parasites in brine shrimp eggs. Not only this but you do not decapsulate them to get rid of parasites and pathogens but to make the eggs able to be digestable. Not only is he incorrect about why you decapsulate them but he is also way off on how to decapsulate them. I wonder if he has ever even raised swordtails and hatched or decapsulated brine shrimp eggs.

Ummmm.....

hmmm, you'd think they'd fact check their articles.

I beleive AFM's motto is "for beginners, by beginners". Their only technical editor is Ed Baumann, and his knowledge is seriously out of date.

Michael,

Every person who has an article accepted by a magazine isn't an expert. As for the editors checking the information, they must have believed that what this person said was the truth.
I've said it before (after Gordon & Kallman), "The main reason that a sexually matured female Swordtail or Platy can-not become a fully functioning male is because when a fully goes through sexual muturity she loses bone & muscle structure which would be necessary to operate the gonopodium. This is to make room for the eggs and fry." This person should have done some research before writing an article.

Darrell E. Mefford

You know something else amazing? There's a person selling some crossed Swordtails which he or she is calling "Red Jet" they don't have the clean look of the old Red Jet Swordtail. Anyway people are bidding on these fish even though you can clearly see that they are being eaten up by melanoma!

Darrell E. Mefford

Love it. We have tried to get the magazines in the UK to promote the BLA wherever possible, but we still get people writing in to them asking where they can get rare and unusual species of swordtails - the answer is still the same - 'from your local fish store!!!'.

Lol Darrell, I would definetely consider breeding a few generations of a new labeled strain I produced before I were to sell it as a new "rare" strain. Or atleast I would disclose that they are a cross of two different fish and may not breed true.

What is real red jets swords looks like? I seen these jets on aquabid, however they do looks like red painted swords.

Wow. Google is doing a good job of indexing the posts here
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q= ... t+swordtail&aq=f&oq=&aqi=