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Aqualognews NUMBER 94 17
FANCY FISH
Around the cities with Xiphophorus hellerii
The Bayreuth Swordtail cross
by John Dawes
Bayreuth is a north Bavarian city with a population of around 73,000
people. It is widely known among music lovers for its annual Bayreuth
Festival of opera, and for its association with the German composer,
Richard Wagner, who lived in Bayreuth between the years 1872 and his
death in 1883.
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Male of the Bayreuth Swordtail cross. Photos: Frank Schäfer
Among fish lovers, Bayreuth is
known as the city where a
distinctive swordtail was exhibited for
the first time in 1968 (reported in
Nordbayerischer Kurier on 11 October
of that year). In common with other
varieties of swordtail, e.g. the Hamburg,
Wiesbaden and Berlin swords, this
particular variety adopted the name of
the city, thus becoming known as the
Bayreuth swordtail.
This was not the first time, however,
that a ‘Bayreuth-type’ swordtail had
been produced. In fact, five years
earlier, Hawaiian breeders Eric and
Larry Nishida had crossed a red
Simpson (high-finned) male and a
normal-finned Hamburg female.
Hamburg swordtails are predominantly
black fish in which the body is overlaid
with reflective green scales. While the
black pigmentation can extend into
the fins, some specimens have reddish
or clear fins instead.
The resulting offspring from this cross
had high fins (a Simpson characteristic)
and Hamburg body coloration, with a
well-formed sword, bright red throat
area and red fins. An article referring to
this ‘Nishida Highfin-hellerii’ first
appeared in the US hobby magazine,
The Aquarium, in November 1963.