Help Keyhole Experts Needed

[barrycuda]

over 6 months ago now i bought a breeding pair of keyholes. they have not done any breeding but where sold as a breeding pair.

to be honest i don't know which is the male and which is the female. one is considerably larger than the other one. they were very timid fish at first especially the smaller one for a long time but now very tame. the smaller one would also not eat for months but now is the greediest fish in the tank. at one stage the smaller keyhole had a very large tummy, but now looks normal again. but now the bigger keyhole looks like a golfball so i thought it might have eggs. but i thought the bigger one is usually the male?

forgot to mention and its always the big keyhole that hovers and hangs out by the flat rock. and its the big keyhole that usually initiates interaction between the 2. the big one also makes his mouth go puffy when the small one comes close, like underneath mouth blows up.

 

[snowflake311]

I would not call my self an expert. But I have a large male keyhole I had another that was smaller but also male. The big one looks like a male to me. Long fins that go past the or to the end of the tail is what males have. The fat tummy concerns me. I lost one of my keyholes to internal bactira infection I manage to save the one.

How are they acting? Are the eating well being active ?
That tummy is a bit large....

 

[barrycuda]

sure, they are greedy happy fish that share the tank with 4 green severums. i can remember a few months back, the smaller keyhole had a stomach like the big one has now. but as you see that one is back to normal.

 

[snowflake311]

Maybe backed up a bit or over eating?

I can't see the small one but the big one is male. They might not be ready to breed you can't rush love.

 

[barrycuda]

yeah they could be over fed a little. they get flakes like 5 times a day and love their daily earthworms also.

 

[Davo86]

yeah they could be over fed a little. they get flakes like 5 times a day and love their daily earthworms also.

why are you feeding 5 times per day?

The small one could be a young male,

What size is the tank?

 

[snowflake311]

feeding 5 times a day AND EARTHWORMS !!!! Oh man that's a lot of food no wonder your fish are fat. Maybe they are too fat to breed haha.

Could you post a photo of just the smaller one. Size does not always mean what sex it is. Like I said I had 2 males one was small one was big.

 

[meguro]

I hope their names aren't Hansel and Gretel.

 

[england]

They do look like a male and female, but sometime's when you buy a breeding pair you have to wait a while for them to rekindle there love,maybe the water condition's are a bit different to what they were kept in before, have you preformed a nice large waterchange?maybe try preforming a 50% change and see what they do, place some either large rock's or slate peice's for somewhere for them to spawn,

this was my old pair

 

[barrycuda]

ive had them for like 6 months now hope it wont be that much longer until they breed. they already have a large flat rock, maybe i put in another one for them. i do feed them quite a abit but the fast growing severums usually scoff most of the food anyhow.