X. Alvarezi is one of the wild type swordtails rarely available in the hobby. This fish is from the Rio Santo Domingo drainage in Mexico, I got mine from an auction in Erie. X. alvarezi resembles X. Helleri and X. signum but with a much deeper and bright horizontal re stripe down the middle of its body. The sword is a bright yellow edged in deep black. This is a more slender fish than X. helleri but about the same length of 5 inches including tail for the males and 3 inches for the females.
This sword tail will take any aquarium fare but really likes mosquito larva and daphnia. This seems to be a fairly lively fish and a trio or a couple of pairs will do nicely in a 20 gallon long. I plan on putting a couple of pair a 35 gallon pond in the summer. My three inch female gave birth to 42 young with a gestation period of about 5 1/2 weeks at 72 degrees. The female must be removed after birth because she will eat what ever she can catch