We purchased kohaku koi swortails females a few months ago at an auction. The notice on the bag said they were kind of rare.

Notice also mentionned that males were unable to reproduce, that females had to be inseminated by regular males producing only 40% kohaku fish per drop.

We googled the name but there doesn't seem to be a lot of info on this particular variety.

So knowing this, we are trying to figure out how to best procede to save as many fry from the main tank. Main tank also contains 1 green female, 1 regular mickey mouse female, 1 mickey kohaku female and a hifin red wag male, 1 mystery baby and the 6 surviving babies from our second birth. Koi male commited suicide 3 days ago trying to swim up the filter waterfall... :(

Tank is mildly planted(still working on that): has a big chunk of java moss, a few small java ferns, a few patches of hemianthus and a bunch of vallineria.

Our females usually drop every 4 to 5 weeks. The smaller one will drop in the isolator but the big girl refuses to drop unless she is with the general population in the main tank.

We have set up a seperate growing tank for the fry and currently have about 20 of them in it.
2 days ago, I come home from work to find my Hubby fry fishing. The big girl had started to drop and was now in isolation. We got 11 young out of the main tank.

It's been 48 hours and she still looks very round. We put her back in with the others and are waiting to see what happens next.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I haven't heard that the fry wouldn't grow into viable adults from the koi variety, but I don't know everything ;). I have some koi swords as well (orange and white, and tri-color) and they are growing into nice looking adults. I use a simple 10 gallon tank with lots of plants, live or plastic and let the female be by herself in it. When I see fry, I actually wait a couple of days before removing her to let her recover a bit. She may get a few fry, but if she's fed well and the kids have lots of hiding places, you'll have more than enough. Frequent feedings and water changes will see the fry get decent size (1/2" or more) in a months time.

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I worked with the Albino Koi strain of Swordtail for several years and the males of that strain are normal and can breed.

Maybe you have the "Lyretail" form? If that's the case. It's the Lyretail,not the Koi which makes the males unable to connect with the females.

Darrell

Since a picture is worth a thousand words: this is what 3 of my females look like.

They're not lyretail, they're "trident"tails. Apparently the males do suffer the same affliction as the lyretails.

We had thought of the growing tank but never accured to me to make a birthing tank... thanks for the idea, it'll be put on the coming soon project list.

Thus far, the bigger babies we have are 3 tricolor and 3 orange and white. They are a little over an inche. They were born last december.

My genetics notions are very rusty but what we were hoping to do was to get the "tridenttail" gene to cross over to other color pattern. We got the hifin redwag male to mate him with our kohaku females.
Maybe see IF we can "merge" the kohaku gene with the hifin gene.

Knowing that only 40% of our young will carry the kohaku gene means it's recessive. Is the hifin also a recessive gene? What would the chances of actually getting hifin kohaku individuals? As far as we can see none of our young have the "tridenttail" but they are still very small.

Any imput from experienced breeders would be welcomed.

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Most people consider "Trident" a form of Lyretail. Some older breeders considered "Lyretails" with extra extensions, be it one, several or a complete Veil (a fault) and believed a Lyretail should have two equal length extensions and clean in between.
Others consider them desirable and to be different (having modifiers causing the extra extensions)

Hifin, Lyretail and Plumetail are all Dominant traits which will show in F1 when you cross to non- Hifin, Lyretail or Plumetail.
Albino and Koi are recessive traits which don't show in F1 when you cross to non- Albino or Koi.
If you are not getting 100% Koi offspring, the fish have been crossed out from Koi.
Kohaku refers to Red-White-Red and Tanchu refers to Red front/white rear. You should get both forms regardless of the pattern on the females and also a small percentage of Solid Whites (which in Albino form is sometimes called "Cherry Cheek")

Darrell E. Mefford (former Fancy Xiphophorus Specialist)

Wow! Thank you so much for all the info Darrell.

lol I feel like a 3 year old in her "why" phase. I've got loads of questions coming to mind. Hope you won't mind sharing your experiences some more.

First, is there a faq on sword breeding\genetics that you would recommend? I would like to brush up on the subject.

Were we misled by the seller when he said these fish were rare? If they are uncommon, what factor makes them so: the koi gene\color pattern or the extra veiling in the tail?

We have had, thus far, 3 batches of babies. The first have their full color: 3 are red with a little bit of white on the belly and 3 are tri-color. The second batch is a mostly Kohaku pattern but seem to have black peppering. So far only one baby from that batch is Tanchu colored. The third batch is few days old only, probably from the same male as the others. Where could the black be coming from? Can we assume that one or both parents come from a crossed lineage?

Also,M redwag was just trying to mate with my smaller koi female; knowing that female can stock sperm, is it at all possible to have a litter of mixed babies?

I'm puzzled my the behavior of my biggest female. As I mentionned above, she will only drop in the main tank. She had a dozen or so fry 3 or 4 days ago. I suppose that the stress of being transfered to the isolator caused her a great deal of stress that stopped the birthing process. Is this very common? How hazardous is it to her health or to that of the fry? I've just fished 16 of them out of the main tank cuz mom was being pursued by the others. Judging by some of the round bellies some of them actually got a snack. I know a few more babies are hiding out in the chunk on java moss : mom was hanging out behing it.

Someone said the babies would grow faster with frequent feeding and water changes. We feed them 2 to 3 times a day and do only one water change a week(25 to 40%). Should we reduce the amount of water per change but increse the number of times to 2 or 3 a week? Feeding is either newly hatched brine or powdered flakes or tubifex worms. Also since we have pygmy cory and otocynclus in the tank i add small pellets every few days..

Think this is it for now... No doubt I'll have more questions later on. Thanks a lot for the help!

I acquired the Albino Koi Swordtails which I worked with until I got out of breeding a couple of years ago, from Mike Yamamoto in Hawaii. Mr. Glenn Y. Takeshita (who passed recently), had been telling me about this strain of Swordtail since about the year 2000 I didn't have internet at that time, so I couldn't Google a photograph.

I was pleased when I received the fish because they were top quality( Ice Box White/ Deep Orange-Red)

I suppose they could still be considered somewhat rare especially in Lyretail (sorry I don't use Trident as I believe it is a modified Lyretail and you'll probably get Lyretails in your fry)

I have seen Koi Swordtails in the pet stores, so they aren't as rare as they once were.

Yes, feed often, but don't over feed.

I have to get back to work, I'll give more later.

Anyone else have anything on this subject?

Darrell

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That's fine by me!!! We just didn't know the proper name to use for them:lyretail is it then!!!

Thanks again for the time you are putting in to this thread! It's really really appreciated!

Saphire,

I didn't answer your question on rather or not to expect fry from a new male when the female is previously bred. That subject tends to come up a lot. In my experience usually you'll see some fry from the new male mixed with fry from previous male in the 2nd or 3rd brood.

The Black on your fry might be from a previous male (which you may have never seen)

As for recommended publications on Fancy Xiphophorus genetics. Anything by Dr. Joanne Norton, but be aware that there were no Koi Swordtails back when her work was being done.

Darrell

Hi everyone
Very interesting topic and something I would like to learn alot more about. I would like to be able to map out all the various colour and forms and label what trait as recessive or dominant. I am also interest in the breeding line for the various existing swordtail varieties.If anybody have any such knowledge they would like to share it would be greatly apprieciated.
Cheers