Wow, real beauties! How confident are you that these are latipinna? I'm no expert at all, but I swear from what I can read and other photos I've looked at...the dorsal development and spotting look more like velifera photos.

Rick

Wow, real beauties! How confident are you that these are latipinna? I'm no expert at all, but I swear from what I can read and other photos I've looked at...the dorsal development and spotting look more like velifera photos.

Rick

The original stock came from a fairly remote mangrove swamp in southwest Florida. They were in a little stream which connected two lagoons. The current in the stream flowed back and forth depending on the tide. Most of the fish, inverts and plants associated with the mollies were brackish or saltwater species. I had no way to measure salinity but the taste test told me the water was almost pure Gulf salty. No exotic species were observed and I can't imagine anybody dumping any velifera way out in the middle of nowhere.

The original stock came from a fairly remote mangrove swamp in southwest Florida. They were in a little stream which connected two lagoons. The current in the stream flowed back and forth depending on the tide. Most of the fish, inverts and plants associated with the mollies were brackish or saltwater species. I had no way to measure salinity but the taste test told me the water was almost pure Gulf salty. No exotic species were observed and I can't imagine anybody dumping any velifera way out in the middle of nowhere.

I don't know that I could tell them apart anyway without sitting down with key and doing some expoloring. Whatever they are, they sure are nice.

Rick

A new question just popped up for me. It seems that for a lot of people it is either almost impossible to keep a line of these sailfins going in a large aquarium with a high percentage of the really big, showy, large dorsal males being produced or at the least requires some high degree of patience and "work". Surely in order to produce a saleable product the commercial breeders have to be able to produce a large percentage of showy males in their operations. How do they do this? From what I can figure out, it isn't just a function of providing more space, or is it? Does a large water volume allow for dilution of hormonal signals that in higher concentrations in aquaria repress development of some males?

Rick

I dont know much about these sailfins but this might help with the question about the commercial breeders.

When I breed bettas I would have to do water changes on the fry tanks every other day in order for all the males to really develop so that I could separate them. If I were to miss a water change or let one male stay longer and become the dominate one in the tank for more than a few days the others would stop or slow thier growth and it would take another week of water changes to get them going again. So basically what I am getting at is that maybe those commercial breeders have a way to have a constant water replacement happening, therfore removing the hormones that repress weaker males. I would also tend to think that they would have to be in a much larger tank/pond to keep the territory issues in check as well.

Ok sorry for the off topic fish, but though that might help with the idea of maturing males.


Here is an idea that you or someone might could try, (using a 90 gallon tank I think that is what I read earlier in the post)
Have a separate water holding tank set up for your water changes that is equal to the 90 tank, run it so that each day 9-10 gallons of water is replaced automatically or by using a float valve and just draining off the main tank and lettin gthe valve do its job. I know this would go through alot of water and salt if you are mixing, but it would replace the entire water volume of the main tank in a weeks time therefore removing any of the hormones that the dominate males may be releaseing.
This might could be done on a smaller scale tank but I dont know how much space the sailfins need.

Damn these guys are hard to photograph!
Here's a few pics of the males that bloomed after the death of the dominent male. All these males were sleepers that looked superficially like females. Some were large when they transformed but some are quite small.
This first pic shows one of the small ones. For reference, the fish above is a female rainwater killie, about 2 inches long.

The rest are random pics of the three large prime males. It's almost impossible to catch them displaying because when they see me move while trying to focus, they rush to the front to beg for food. I'll keep trying.

mine look just like those. the ones i collected have big sails

Nice fish!

mine look just like those. the ones i collected have big sails