My hifin blue variatus w/plea for help

OK, so I ran a thread in trop. chitchat about these hifin blue variatus that I had found at the lfs, I eventually went back to the store and bought the entire lot, I now have 15 of them. I did several web searches for info on these fish (it has been a good many years since I have seen a hifin livebearer of any kind), came up with info and pics for various other color variants of platy, but nothing on the blues. Only reference to these specific fish was a listing for a magazine article titled something like "One Man's Search for the Elusive Hifin Blue Variatus", but no links or other info. Several responses to my thread asked for pictures of these fish, and I finally got some, my first fish pics to be posted on this forum!

Here is a picture of a group...

Here is one of a male hiding behind strand of java fern....

I have some platies very similar to those... only minus the high fin. At my lfs, they were called 'blue coral platy'

What kind of info are you looking for? I've been keeping livebearers for 4 years now.

Another one, swimming away...

And a last one, this one is behind java fern also...

dont know if you saw my message, tucked in between our photos...

What kind of info are you looking for on them?

What I was wondering,canoechiq, was whether anybody on the forum was keeping, knew of anybody that was keeping, or had seen these fish before. I have been keeping fish most of my life, a good 35 years of it anyway, and the only other hifin livebearer I've ever got hold of was the Simpson hifin swordtails, this was back in the late 60's or early 70's. I've kept my eyes open for these fish for many years now, but they just don't seem to be around, and it's a shame because they were beautiful fish. I would have bought these fish anyway, just because I like them, but when I did the searches for them on the web and came up with basically nothing but a vague reference, I began to wonder if I had something rare or out of the ordinary. I keep quite a diverse variety of fish, I find it hard to "specialize". I have kept the red coral platies before, they are actually one of my wife's favorite fish. Coral platies generally tend to be smaller than "regular" platies, I think these that I have now would be bigger than the blue coral platies. The pics don't really do them justice, the tank is a used tank and the glass is scratched, I just did a water change earlier in the day and the water is still in the "stirred up" stage....sorry about the quality. Also, I'm not a real good photographer

I actually found the opposite with my platies... My 3 female corals are huge compared to my female sunset wag. The blues are much deeper, and when preggers they got a ginormous belly.

I did some searching on the net as well, and found some hi-fin platies, but none were blue corals.


http/www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_Di...=21&pCatId=1069


It almost seems that you've just got a bred one... a blue coral with a hi-fin, and the blue was the predominant colour and the same with the fin (that's a rather obvious statement, I know.)

I dont know what else to say, but from the lack of responces you have recieved on both of the boards you posted on, I'd say you have something different and special there. Well done.