--Livebearer fish are tropical fish in which their young are "born alive". This means that the fry remain inside their mother's stomach in the mother's provided egg sack, or embreo, until the fry are fully formed. In other words, The mother fish keeps the eggs inside her stomach untill the baby fish are ready to come out. Livebearers include guppies, swordtails, mollies, and platies. Livebearers are originally from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and parts of Costa Rica. Livebears are native to North America and sold in pet shops all around the country. Its now commercially bred in Florida for profit.
--The common Livebearer is an omnivore, eats both plants and animals. In the wild, their basic diet includes the plants that grow at the bottom of rivers and lakes, algae growing on rocks, and tiny water bugs living on the water's surface. In captivity, they mostly eat dried flake food, but do enjoy live food such as live brine and diaptomus. Livebearers don't live in salt water. They live in freshwater, in temperatures from 68 to 81ºF, and pH levels 6.9 to 7.4, but they don't tolerate poor water quality.
--Any livebearer is a perfect fish for the beginner aquarist. They're peaceful, can live in all types of aquariums, and they're also quiet easy to breed. See Breeding Livebears for information on how to breed them. Livebearers can have up from 10 to 75 babies at one time. Some can even have babies after their mates dies by using saved sperm. The babies then take about to 2 years to develop their colors fully. Most Livebearers are born with one, possibly two, solid colors. Livebearers can have rainbow colors, but the average colors include orange, red, often gray, and black. Special colors may include blue, green, and rarely purple. Some livebearers have transparent fins.
--Livebears average live expectancy is 5 to 7 years. When first born a livebears size is 1 to 2 millimeters long. It takes about 7 months to a year to grow to their max size of 2 inches. During this time, their constantly moving. They almost never sit still and can move very quickly if it feels threatened. You can always tell if something is wrong with the water for livebearers are always the first to die. Especally mollies. But if only a sigle livebearer is stagering at the bottom it is probly weak or has caught some sorta diseas.
When a livebearer is pregnet, the aquarist must seperate the mother from the main tank and further yet find a method to keep the newly born fry away from the mom. The above picture shows a good method of this. One of the easiest method is as follows: Have a tank of 5 to 10 gallons set up. Scatter gravel all over the ground about an inch or so high. The bigger the gravel the better. You should also have well planted, bushy foilage (plants), but this isn't nesasary. Once the fry are born they will seak shelter for the mother will eat them. They'll hide in the dense foilage and swim in between the cracks of the gravel. Once the fry are born, don't disturb the gravel and remove the parent.
Both plants and animals are classified, according to their natural characteristics, in a pyramid that has 7 colums called the Classification Pyramid. The Classifiction Pyramid consists of mostly latin words. By using the Genus and Species, the scientific name if formed. Ex: Xiphophorus maculatus. Note: The species is always lowercased.
