Please help me sex my Blue Rams (pic's included)

[Colin_BC]

Daveo, sorry if something has offended you here, but I questioned myself because of the raised dorsal fin. I've strongly suspected female from what I read since before I posted, but this Ram changes in appearance a fair bit. When I had the smaller ram isolated in a 10G with platy's it's colour's came back quite strong and the pink wasn't really noticable. The dorsal fin seemed tough to judge relative to the size difference in the 2 rams. It almost looks that once the 2 are equal size, the dorsal fins my be equal. I never noticed any difference in the tail fin.

Going by the overwhelming repsonse here, I'm obviously going to continue to suspect female. It just a question of when the Ram's are going to figure it out and settle down a bit.

Colin

 

[Auratus]

Alrighty... it's a female imo.

I have pictures of my rams and the males have a yellow chest/belly while females have a very pink belly. If you wanna see pictures of my female it looks exactly like yours...

 

[Daveo]

Sorry If I blew up, just a lot of people have said it is female. Heck I even made a poll to help you with your decition if you look a 100% said it was female. 8)

Daveo

 

[Colin_BC]

Daveo Posted on Jul 12 2004, 09:27 AM
Sorry If I blew up, just a lot of people have said it is female. Heck I even made a poll to help you with your decition if you look a 100% said it was female.

Daveo

It happens... And I admit I have been asking the same question with the same doubts despite so many saying "female." The response here has been overwhelming and I think to safe to say it's female. I'm just waiting for the male to let up a bit in his chasing of her.

I do appreciate the help from everyone here, yourself included Daveo. I full concur regarding the pink bellies. She does defeinately have a pink belly compared to him. The dorsal fin is what's been throwing me (and a couple others here) for a bit of a loop, and I haven't noticed a difference in tail fins.

Colin

 

[Colin_BC]

............OK, I think everyone here insisting "it's a female" has finally been enough to convince my rams the truth. There has been no chasing in about 36 hours, just following when i added a couple upturned 3" pots hiding in plants for caves. I also added a nice big chunk of glass 3" from a corner and plant a couple weeks ago. The female has been swimming around with full colours and her dorsal fully extended. The male is always like that. I've seen them look towards the pot's, but they each ignore going in them. Probably just the security of knowing there's more hiding places.

I was just reading on ram breeding and behavior's, and how rams will either clean a rock or cave or dig a pit for a while before breeding. I guess they were reading over my shoulder and decided "what the hell, let's give that a shot!" During dinner I looked over to notice both rams down in the corner by the chunk of glass. It's a secluded gravel spot in a small opening in the corner in between the glass chunk and some plants. The female looked like she was looking for food, but then I realized she was spitting rocks off to the side. The male has moved a couple rocks, but mostly sticks to chasing away the albino cory. A few times I've seen the female go straight to my Royal Pleco with the male right behind. Together, they both 'herd' the pleco towards the farthest opposite corner if he comes with 6" of the corner they were picking at. If they do lay eggs, I'll have tp put my tank divider back in and isolate a bit less of 1/4 of the tank for them. I haven't yet decided whether to leave the adulst with the eggs or not. I know they should fan the eggs unless the eggs die prematurely or the parents just get really hungry, although they ate (dry) bloodworms for dinner several hours ago... I'll have to wait and see what they do now....

Colin

 

[Colin_BC]

I used a tank divider to islolate the pair, but as soon as they were isolated the male began to chase the female again constantly. I've since taken them out the divider and will let nature take it's course naturally until they can have their own tank.

Colin

 

[Dragonscales]

Before reading your post about them digging around in the bottom I would have said without a doubt it's a female, there doesn't seem to be a need to say it now though lol

As for how to tell the sex, it's alot harder with the German blue variety as both can have traits of male and female colourings, especially when young. Generally I have always found the male to grow alot larger than the female and his dorsal spikes are longer, as well as his pectoral fins. Best way to tell would be either to leave em together and see if they pair up or to seperate them into two tanks and watch to see if one or both develop into Alpha males, I.E. very robust fish with long pectoral fins and dorsal spikes.

I have two males and two females in one tank here and one male looks like a female because he isn't the Alpha male, this is often the case when the males aren't the dominant one and don't have a mate in the tank (The Alpha male in my tank has claimed both females, unusual for rams as they don't generally work like harem breeding cichlids, they usually only form pairs).