Hi, new to keeping guppies. I thought all mine were male as wasn't planning to breed but suspicious this orange one may be female due to anal fin and male behaviour changes towards him/her. Thoughts please on the sex?
The photos of the anal fin are not very clear. But if the anal fin is fan shaped it's either a very young male which has not yet reached puberty or it's a female. I doubt it's a juvenile male if you bought it from a shop though.
And being with all those males, a female will be carrying sperm if not already carrying fry.
And being with all those males, a female will be carrying sperm if not already carrying fry.
That's a young male which is still developing. No doubts!
Thanks for the reply,
Sorry about pic quality - had no idea how hard it is to take a clear fish photo!
Fish is my biggest guppy other than the white male photographed so doubt a juvenile. I am not sure if the anal fin is fan shaped but it certainly isn't at pointy as the other 5 males' in the tank
Thanks for taking a look! It is my second biggest guppy out of 6, do you still think a developing male?
I'm sure about it...
OK brill, thank you!
My pleasure...
He's already starting to develop a gonopodium. In a week the full gonopodium should be there.
You can absolutely trust EmeraldKing when it comes to livebearers, just look at his siggy - he even writes articles about them and keeps rare wild livebearers - so no worries!
But if it helps, I was also sure it's a male too, and I've bred and sexed several hundreds of guppies from breeding them for years.
We can (just about, but I know how hard it is to even snap a photo of some fish, especially to get clear photos of the anal fin!) see the gonopodium developing. There can be quite a variety of size in guppies, even from the same batch, and yours are from different breeding lines for different colour varieties, so size doesn't always equal age when it comes to many fish. Pure white guppies do tend to be smaller on average, while certainly my koi guppies like your orange and white are larger than my blues, even as full adults.
Male guppies kept without females is usually fine, but they'll still show some breeding type behaviours to each other. Sometimes they act as though the other is a female, other times it may be dominance like behaviour. They'll shimmy and show off their tails to each other, chase each other round, and usually establish a bit of a pecking order. How many guppies do you have in total? Because sometimes the one on the lowest end of the pecking order can be targeted a bit and bullied. But adding a few more males should split that up among them all a bit more. Adding a lot of tall growing plants that break up lines of sight can help too. Gives the one being picked on a place to hide and rest for a bit.
Six should be plenty to spread around the displaying, no worries, and I wouldn't add more to this size tank. But adding lots of plants, whether real of fake, that break up lines of sight between them and provide hiding places can help.
Live plants would be better for the fish, water quality, and overall health of the tank, but if you go for fake, get silk plants, since the plastic ones can be quite sharp, and tear long dangling fins like the long tails on male guppies.
Welcome to the hobby!
That’s a fuzzy picture and I was going to say female because of the way it looks through the semi-transparent area in the anal region but The King says it’s a developing male and what he says is good . Nice colored guppy .
I agree. Whatever the rest of us say, emeraldking is the one to listen to
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