What is a Broccoli swordtail? A green swordtail that smells like cabbage? No, not at all! If one crosses a simpson swordtail – simpsons are the swordtails with the long dorsal fin – with a lyretail swordtail – lyretails have prolongations in all fins – some of the offspring have a very long simpson dorsal fin. In these fish single rays of the dorsal fin are longer than the remaining ones. This was felt not to be attractive for a long time and the cross was also excluded from competitions. But in Asia people saw the things different. They continued developing the cross and finally the result was a fish in which the extraordinary large simpson dorsal had wavy structures along the edge. The breeders named the new sport „broccoli“. We now have received for the vey first time some of these swordtails, bred on red albinos. The red albino sport in X. hellerii is called the „Vienna cross“.
For our customers: the fish have code 420964 on our stocklist. Please note that we exclusively supply the wholesale trade.
Text & photos: Frank Schäfer
