Are Swordtails simmilar to Platys in alot of ways?

We have a 75 gallon that we've been looking into getting a few more fish for, ...some that will swim up at the top alot as well (We have platys in our 36 gallon and they swim all over the place. theyre our favorite fish we have) We didnt want to put Platys in the 75, so we thought about something simmilar looking like Swordtails. They look almost the same, and their personalities seem simmilar. I know they have different looking fins, but that looks to be about it

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Platys and Swordtails are closely related, they easily cross breed. Most of the Swordtails on the market, except for the Green ones, have been crossed with Platys. The best Swords are always on the purebreed Green Swordtails.

I hear swordtails are jumpers.

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fw leiden since 1979, fo salt since 1979, mixed reef 55g 2002-2009. Strong emphasis on the tank taking care of itself. Balanced with plant life, no water changes, tap water, no filters in FW. Only dosing calcium, alk, mag in marine reef tanks. http://www.aquariumforum.com/f15/my-...ods-26410.html
recent tanks (till 2009) 7 years- 10g FW leiden 7 yrs, 55g mixed reef 7, 2 yrs, 20g FW leiden, 10 g fw leiden , 29g mixed reef, current tank 55g leiden

The domestic, store swords and platys are pretty well all mixes of three Xiphophorus species - helleri, variatus and maculatus. I think there is also a lot of X alvarezi in the redder swords. The wild fish (which I love) are greenish, and a lot of the platy (based on maculatus) and sword (based on helleri) domestic forms have their colour from variatus. It's a mess of man-made mutts.
Swords are jumpers, as beaslbob pointed out, and are rougher than platies. I always kept them together with no problem. They CAN cross, but they'd rather not. In the wild, they aren't that close, but since we have man-made versions in the stores, they are cousins.
if you like platys, you'll like swords. Swords are bigger and faster (they love currents), while platys are slightly more easy-going and gentler.

I have about 20 Swords in my 125g. They get pretty big for livebearers and when they produce it can be quite a bit. I have seen 85+ from one female and heard of larger, but having more Swordtails in the tank keep the fry to a lower level. Great fish, very active. I keep them with about 40 Platies.

Yeah that would be alot of babies

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