One of the many advantages of speaking at aquarium societies across the country is the privilege of visiting hobbyists' fishrooms.

In November of 2008, I spoke about my family's hatchery operations at the Louisville Tropical Fish Fanciers, a club in Kentucky. Arriving on a Saturday morning. I was picked up at the airport by Morris Spillman. After collecting the fish I had brought for the club's auction from Southwest Airlines' air cargo, we spent the afternoon visiting Rusty Wessel' incredible fishroom.

Rusty graciously showed off his 90 aquaria and approximately 200 species of fish, about 90 percent of which are fish or descendants of fish he collected from the wild. Among those fish was a swordtail he had collected from the Rio Otapa in the state of Veracruz, Mexico on one of his many collecting trips.

Being somewhat overwhelmed by the many species of livebearers Rusty had, many of which he insisted on giving me to take home, I didn't pay much attention to that particular swordtail. Those who know me know that I'm primarily interested in mollies, and Rusty had some mangrove mollies (Poecilia orri) for which I had been searching.

Leaving Rusty's place, I had eight bags of six species of livebearers of various ages and sizes. Had I really looked at his mature Rio Otapa males. I would have been more excited about having what I thought was just another green swordtail. As it was, the swords were ensconced in a vat and quickly forgotten.

A Quick Side Trip

Before I proceed to the Rio Otapa swordtail, I want to explain my initial less-thanenthusiastic attitude about the swords. First, it would be two days in Louisville before getting home to have a chance to look at them. Second, they were swordtails, not my first love in fish. Third, Morris had planned a collecting trip to a local creek to find some darters.

Now, since the daytime temperatures were barely over freezing in Kentucky (when I had left home, temperatures were in the high 80s), I naively assumed that collecting was out of the question. Wrong! Sunday morning, I found myself at a store purchasing wading boots, a sweatshirt, thick socks, shorts, and a windbreaker. Shortly afterward, Morris and I were at the creek where others of the club were supposed to meet us. As it turned out, there was only one other idiot - err, club member - who showed up. For about an hour, we fruitlessly chased the many beautiful darters we could see but not capture.

The only catchable things were some Gambusia affinis, an extremely common fish at home and not a fish I really wanted to take back. The darters mocked us, hovering just out of reach of our nets, tantalizingly close but so far away. Then, miraculously, we learned how to jab the nets just right to catch the agile little fish.

Finally, even the two locals got too cold to function and we retired to the warmth of the car. After being frozen for an eternity, I barely remembered that Rusty had given me any fish much less the swordtails.

The cold collecting trip was followed by the club meeting, my talk, and a very active fish and plant auction. I then visited another hobbyist's fishroom and finally retired to get a few hours sleep before my flight home to warm Texas.

A Beautiful Sword
Arriving home in the late afternoon two days after Rusty gave me the fish, I placed them into quarantine vats and forgot about them for a couple of months.

We raise our flsh in vats, not aquaria, so we often don't see the fish except at feeding time, and then only from above. The Rio Otapa swordtails, like many wild-caught or

recent descendants of wild-caught fish, didn't deign to come up to eat. For all I knew, they had died. Finally, our daily fish database to-do report, which dictates when I process and examine our fish, insisted I empty the Rio Otapa swordtail vat to inventory the fish.

Of the dozen juveniles I had gone home with, only six fish remained. But what fish they were! The males, while thin, are very long with extremely long, black swords and a brilliant yellow dorsal. The yellow bleeds into the dorsal surface of the fish.

I quickly discovered what had happened to the other six fish - these fish jump! While all swordtails can jump, the Rio Otapa swordtail must be the jumping champion of the swordtail world. We raise a dozen or so commercial swordtail strains and Xiphophorus nezahualcovotl and X. clemenciae, but none of them jump like the Rio Otapa swords.

For our other swordtails, we merely reduce their vats' water levels and they remain at home. Not the Rio Otapa swordtails. Our six swordtails quickly dwindled to four until I covered the vat with the aquaculture netting we use to build breeding cages.

Fortunately for the jumpers, jumping didn't mean death. Our facilities consist of three greenhouses with recirculating systems. The vats sit in a floor gutter with about 4 to 6 inches of water. Water flows into the vats, overflows through strainers, and cascades into the floor gutter from which it flows through our plants' filters and collects in the sumps where pumps return it to the vats. The system maintains zero ammonia conditions and crystal-clear water.

So, when the fish jumped, they ended up in the floor gutter. Just a few days ago, I was working on a problem in the sump (4 feet deep) and watched a male Rio Otapa swordtail happily court some feral female commercial swordtails.

Having finally seen mature Rio Otapa swordtails without the distraction of other fish in Rusty's fishroom, I was entranced. I had two males and two females. The males were easily 6 inches long, half of which was the sword. I had to find out more about these fish.

I emailed Rusty asking him if he thought these fish were X. hellerii (the common green swordtail). Rusty believes they are X. hellerii, and I agree without any real evidence except for the fact that they look like really spectacular green swordtails. That said, I'm sure some taxonomic splitter could find a reason to create a new species for them. They certainly are unique. To find out more, you can check out Xiphophorus Hellerii Swordtail.