How can I entice my fish to breed??

Question
Hey Karen,
How are you? As for myself, my tank and little buddies, we're all doing GREAT!!!
I recently bought a pair of  Red Eye Swords, and I wanted to know if there is anything I could do to help them to breed..(they are big, around 3.5 to 4 inches and they are very affectionate, you know what I mean?) like maybe with our "Secret Weapon"? Good ole, faithful WATER CHANGES? I remember reading a story by you sometime ago about this subject..
If you can give me a little insight on this, it would be great! (I'm ready to be a Daddy! Ha, ha, ha)
                       
                          God Bless and Thank You,
                                  TSL

Answer
Dear Tsl, how are you? I'm doing fine thanks!
Swordtails, like nearly all livebearers need little encouragement to breed. Your female is very likely already pregnant. Actually, there is just very little trouble towards getting livebabies to be born when it comes to livebearers. As long as you provide good water quality (I know YOU will--but some people don't) feed a well-balanced diet, and avoid too much stress to the female she will surprise you with a batch of babies before long.
Avoid allowing her to be overly subject to the males overagressive behavior towards her. It just depends on the male, some are very overly aggressive with their breeding tendancies, stressing the female to the point where she may sit on the bottom, to avoid swimming with the male above.
Your pair may do excellent, but it's much better to have at least 3 females to every male.

Now your swordtail pair are not in a seperate aquarium are they? The only problem you may have is losing some of the fry to the  fish or other fish living in the aquarium. Providing lots of very thick cover in the form of thick clumps of plants either live or plastic really helps to save baby fish. Or you can have her in one of those breeding traps designed to keep the fry safe.

Yes, indeed, all-around water changes are excellent for keeping your pair and other fish in good health. Fry respond extremely well to daily even just 20% water changes and will have growth spurts as a result.

Let me know when you have Swordtail fry! I would love to hear about it all!

Best wishes and I hope this helped...
Karen~