Fresh Fish

I have a 55-gallon fresh water aquarium in which I keep just a few types of small fish. I have some swordtails. Well, I have lots of swordtails. You see, my one female swordtail had had several babies (called "fry" in the fish world). She did this once or twice before. Twice, I think. I had a female and a male, then one day I noticed one little baby fish. There must have been more to start with but they got eaten by the big fish. I don't have those big fish anymore. A month or so ago I noticed six more little fish. Again, any more than that must have been eaten. About a week ago I noticed that the female, who'd gotten quite fat, suddenly looked thinner. A closer inspection revealed dozens of little tiny swordtail babies!

I'm excited, of course, but I'm also a little worried. The big fish are gone, so the babies aren't being eaten. This means that, eventually, I'll have way too many fish in my aquarium.

I was thinking that I could just separate the female from the males. Well, duh, there are now a lot of females and a lot of males. So that's no longer an option. I know that a lot of fish keepers (is that what we're called?) actually will euthanize some of the fry so the aquarium doesn't become overcrowded. But I would hate to do that. I could give some away, I guess. That would be the best idea, I think, if I can find people who are interested.

I'm also concerned about the siblings mating in the future. I doubt that that's a good thing.

I guess I'm going to have to give it some serious thought, and do some research. In the meantime, I've uploaded a couple of short videos of the fry to my YouTube account. It's at http://www.youtube.com/wacvet/ . Have a look.