You must have heard stories of two animals fighting for dominance. That also happens in the fish world, especially with territorial fish like the swordtails. When you keep two male swordtails together, it can induce a lot of risks.
If you want to keep two male swordtails together, you must know about the risks. Swordtail males are aggressive when it comes to mating, food, or territory. Therefore, keeping two swordtail males together can be risky as they are competitive and fight for dominance.
This aggression can lead to the death of one of the fish within minutes. So what should you know about keeping two male swordtails together? Let’s find out.
General Description Of A Swordtail Male
To know if you can keep two males together in a single tank, you should first know what they look like.
Swordtail males are beautiful creatures with a unique appearances. Male swordtails have longer, more colorful fins. In addition, they have a signature sword-like elongated tail, which will help you identify males from females.
They grow about 5 inches in length, excluding their tails about an inch or two long.
Swordtails are active, peaceful, and amicable. But, this can change you do not take proper care of their preferences.
Are Male Swordtails Aggressive?
No, male swordtail fish are not generally aggressive. However, they can exhibit aggression while feeding, mating, and protecting their territory.
Male swordtails can show aggression when mating if they’re fighting over food or territory. Therefore, it’s important to know male swordtail behavior before keeping two males together because aggressive behaviors can lead to fatal consequences.
If you have more males, they will fight and decide who is the strongest. The winner will dominate the loser and establish their territory in the tank.
Swordtail males show aggressiveness towards each other regarding food, and they’re also aggressive eaters.
Swordtail males are territorial and heavily aggressive, especially when mating.
Can You Keep Two Male Swordtails Together?
It is important to know what you’re getting into when attempting to keep two swordtail males together because there can be aggression between them if they don’t get along well enough or something goes wrong with their environment.
In addition, if you are unwilling to put in the time and effort to make sure that both males get along, they should live apart.
If one male has an aggressive personality or has an unequal territory size (bigger than the other), there will be continual fighting over which area to live in.
However, it has been seen that the male swordtails do not have as much aggression towards each other when there are no female swordtails in the tank. Thus, you might be able to make two males co-exist peacefully if you do not keep females along with them.
The Risks Of Keeping Two Male Swordtails Together
You should always be aware of any risks when you keep two swordtail males together. There are many reasons why it is not recommended to keep male swordtails together, and the most common one is fish aggression and fighting for dominance over mating, food, or territory.
It also depends on what personality type the two swordtails are. For example, some swordtails are born alpha and are likely to bully the weaker males in the tank. On the other hand, if one male has a more aggressive personality or a larger territory, there will be continual fighting over which area to live in.
The Risks Include:
Injury
Swordtail males are very competitive and will fight for dominance. The fights are characterized by chasing, fin nipping, tail biting, etc.
The nipping and biting can lead to injury of your swordtail that can cause other fatal issues.
Diseases
Swordtail males are also more susceptible to diseases when they have open injuries from the fight.
Likewise, they can catch diseases because they’re territorial, leading them to contact other fish’s waste or parasites, which may be detrimental to their health.
Starvation
If you keep two swordtails together and do not feed each one of them properly, they will start fighting over food.
The stronger male will bully your fish and eat up all the feed leading the weaker male to starvation.
Stress
The constant fight, injuries, and starvation can lead to stress. In addition, your weaker male will be stressed if another male constantly bullies them.
In the same way, two males together mean constant stress to the females present. The male swordtails will compete to get mating rights. This can affect the life of the female swordtail too.
How Can You Make Two Swordtail Male Peacefully Co-exist?
We would love to see two swordtail males living with each other playfully, enjoying each other’s company like they are BFF. But is it possible?
Two males can co-exist peacefully, but you must be willing to invest the time and energy into watching over your gender.
Here are some things you can do to help them co-exist without being at each other’s throat all the time:
Tank And Water Conditions
This is a must for any fish, but it’s essential with swordtails because they are susceptible to diseases and have open injuries that will grow bacteria in their tank.
The tank should be at least 150 gallons (or 1000 liters), so there isn’t too much territorial issue between them.
If both of your fish will have enough space to swim around, there won’t be any territorial issue to fight over. Instead, both will enjoy their own space.
Similarly, if you maintain the water parameters, the males will flourish. This also means less stress, and thus, less aggression.
Also, make sure you add many hiding spots to protect the weaker one from the bully. Finally, adding think, live plants in the tank is significant.
If you’re not willing or able to maintain the water conditions on your own, then it’s probably best to keep only one male in the tank.
Feeding And Monitoring Their Territory
There are ways to prevent territorial issues, but you’ll need to be sure that each swordtail is able and willing to share its territory with the other one.
One way of doing it is by creating a tank divider so that both males have an equal amount of space to live without coming into contact with or fighting with the other male.
You can also have both males’ territories connected by a tunnel to swim back and forth between each territory. Still, they won’t be in contact with one another as long it is very well hidden out of view from either swordtail’s territory.
You should always be aware of any risks when you keep two swordtails together, but if food is not an issue and they can both live on their own territory without having issues with each other, then there is a chance that the two males are in fact compatible.
Male Female Ratio
You can find two male swordtails competing so that they can impress the females around. Thus, you can prevent any heat between your males by maintaining the male-female ratio or by completely removing the females from the tank.
The ideal ratio of males to females is 1:3. So, if you are willing to keep two males together, make sure there are 6 females. This will prevent stress among both males and females.
Otherway is to remove females from the tank to remove the unhealthy competition between the two. Swordtails tend to be less aggressive towards each other when there are no females present. Typical male trait, isn’t it? But, it is true.
Therefore, these are some ways through which you two male swordtails might be able to live together.
Conclusion
Can two swordtail males live together? It depends on a variety of factors. Male swordtails are not aggressive towards each other in the wild, and they can co-exist peacefully when introduced to one another as adults with plenty of room to swim around.
But if you have more than two male swordtails living together, there will likely be aggression between them at some point. So take care of the important factors that I have explained above, and you should be good.
