Discus, male or female?

[Origami Gourami]

Hi there,

I have a pair of red turquoise discus who are happily enjoying life together. I was wondering if there was any way of telling a male from a female. Just out of interest really...

I plan to put two more in the near future to make a nice managable group (I know they are at their happiest in larger groups) and it would be nice to be able to tell a Mr from a Mrs!

PS - I know about issues of territory, etc, and will prepare things accordingly to ensure continuing harmony!

 

[Gourami Lover88]

Now these are not 100% but are close to figuring the sex :

a) Body type, males will usualy have their dorsal and anal fin open making them look amost like a triangle while females wont unferal their fins as much and will often look like a circle.

B) Markings, with my discus the males usualy wont display the vertical black bars especialy the eye bar,where as the females will.

c)With my discus the males wil often take the lead in cortship by "kissing" and flanking the females and doing the discus dance.

d) I dont know how old your discus are but as they get older, the females will stop growing at about 5-6inches while males will grown on to get about 8inches.


If you can provide pictures then I could probably help in determening the sex.

 

[Seb R]

wait until they lay eggs lol

honestly its tricky to tell

 

[Origami Gourami]

Thanks Lover88 and Seb!

I will try and get pics soon, but what you say about stripes is very intriguing - I have one who often has dark verticals and one that doesn't, so could be i have a mr and mrs after all!

They are fairly young, about 3.5 - 4 inches and although they swim together, there is one that appears the dominant one (I think it's the female, judging by the vertical bar info above), but not in an aggressive way - more 'I'm swimming here, move it!' kind of way!

@ Discus dance - looking forward to seeing that one! Currently they seem to have a permanent look of abject surprise...

Will get pics sorted asap!

Thanks both!

 

[elgecko]

Sexing discus is very difficult.
I have heard about the triangle shape method.
Never about the vertical bars. Typically the bars are displayed when the fish are upset or stressed.
The best method is to see them spawn.

 

[jaywings19]

Don't mean to hijack the thread... but I've been curious about the same topic. Here are some pictures of my Discus (see below). Perhaps this will also help Origami Gourami. I managed to get 4 of them in the pictures... the 5th one was being extremely camera shy tonight.

 

[MissClaire]

Mmmm it is very tricky....It's more about watching their behaviour and guessing!
I figured out my red turq was female when she first laid (obviously) but I had my suspsions. She was really timid and kind of just swam past the males like they wernt there. And then Russell would start showing off and carrying on along with Tigey as they both fought for her affection. I could cleary tell they were both male at this point the way they puffed up their fins and got all territorial with each other. Ruski on the other hand I have no idea...'he/she' just sits on the fence. It could be a 'she' but it hasnt laid eggs...perhaps he is a gay fish, im undecided, or perhaps its the fish that is undecided. Ruski is only a juevinile after all and teenage years are tough times for discovering sexuallity!
Now where was I?
ahhh yes:
Females: Swim around without a care ignoring males...
Males: Show off, dart around, puff up fins, chase other males away, swim back and forth, swim into glass when female fish swims past, wholf whistles, chases another fish again to prove his masculinity, and tries to desperatly coax female to his favourite driftwood hidey hole with no avail

 

[elgecko]

Females: Swim around without a care ignoring males...
Males: Show off, dart around, puff up fins, chase other males away, swim back and forth, swim into glass when female fish swims past, wholf whistles, chases another fish again to prove his masculinity, and tries to desperatly coax female to his favourite driftwood hidey hole with no avail

My females were the ones that fought each other trying to get the males attention.
I guess it depends on the number of males to females and visversa in the tank.

 

[Origami Gourami]

Thanks everyone!

Miss Claire, you're post made me laugh so much! I'm sure Ruski appreciates such a supportive mum, whatever his/her orientation may be!

Still trying to decide on names for them, but am waiting for some more character traits to emerge...

PS Some lovely pics of discus(eses?!) - makes me realise how far mine have yet to grow! Managed to squeeze an ickle picture in my avatar and sig pic, still no webspace to call my own! Oh well...

 

[Gourami Lover88]

jaywings19-

From what I can tell the golden dragon is a male and the 2 blues look like they might be females, but the redmelon is hard to tell because of the other discus geting in the way.

 

[kenny_discus]

How to sexing discus???

the easiest, we can see from their round shape body (triangle methods) like Gouramie lover said, but that methods will be failed if discus have high body round shape. or we can see from their fin, male usually have long fin at their upper fin, but that methods will failed too when we try to sexing discus with no stress bar like pigeon, red melon, marlboro n others. Vertical bars is NOT methods to figure sex of discus, bcause it's stress bar n every discus have different sharpness of their bars specially which cross the eyes!!! Usually we see stress bars after discus fight and after laying eggs.
So we can use Triangle methds for our discus bcause it very easy way, but their so many ways to figure sex of discus, depend on what strain we want to figure sexing... Thanks anyway pals....