# General livebearer breeding questions



## Toad (Oct 6, 2009)

There seem, to be a few varieties of swordtails, even more of platies, and seemingly limitless types of guppies.

Are all these varieties due to selective breeding within species (taking advantage of any mutations)?

Or is breeding across species fairly common? Say for example breeding guppies to a red swordtail to get a more intense red color and then trying to fix that red into the guppy strain. Or would that fish (and successive generations) always be mongrels? Or could they even breed?

Just curious. Thanks.


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## toddnbecka (Jun 10, 2009)

Crossing guppies with swordtails wouldn't work. Most of the fish are selectively bred from within their own species, occaisonally crossed with others from the same genus, rarely swordtails may be crossed with platies.


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## Toad (Oct 6, 2009)

Thanks i wasn't sure if the common livebearers might interbreed.


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