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Sexing African Blood Caps???

Magnum Man

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Some fish are easy to sex, with distinct coloration… my 3 Blood Caps. all have close to the same coloration, but I think I have one male and 2 females, based more on body shape…the one I think is the male looks more muscular… actually has a more humped shape to its back…
I think this one me is a male
IMG_5881.jpeg

If @GaryE … or anyone familiar with African Tetras can confirm????
 
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I think this one is a female, based on its shape, with less hump to its back
IMG_5884.jpeg
 
Usually, a rounder belly is female, because of eggs. Males tend to be more slender. So I suspect you've got it reversed.
 
Well if that’s the case, she’s the boss
 
I also noticed a little more white coloration on the lower fins of the 1st fish, that the other two don’t have… that also was why my assumption, that it was a male???
 
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I'll take a good look at mine later. I refuse to call them "blood caps" though. That sounds like they lost a fight with Vikings.

 
Sorry…

Bathyaethiops breuseghemi​


Somehow Blood Cap seems much easier 😉
 
The bigger one also has more color on its dorsal fin as well… all 3 in this picture
IMG_5896.jpeg
 
The Latin name is one of the most difficult to write, for me. But you get a break - I actually think they're B greeni.

I got both species in my last purchase. Both sexes of the 'exploding boil tetras' (how's that for a new trade name) have white on the fins, assuming I have both sexes. I have the Angry Spine Hemorrhoid tetras and the plainer breuseghemmi, and if internet photos on reliable sites are reliable, you seem to have greeni.

They could be "first date forehead pimple" tetras as well.
 
Ah… more confusion…. Mine were bought as breuseghemi


I got these from Dan’s and while he does get fish from Glaser, I would suspect these came from a different source, as he was getting several African species, and complaining about their condition, and eventually quit carrying them… and I’ve heard nothing but good, about Glaser… not disputing the greeni name, just that my fish likely didn’t come through Glaser…
 
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I received mine, identified as breuseghemi too, and the group turned out to be both them and greeni. They were young, and the identification was made in the Congo by the exporter. I began to look for info on them as the differences developed over time, and realized the 'new' fish was the real breuseghemi, and the ones I had previously received seemed to be the greeni. I've seen both names applied to the same pictures, but fishbase has it clear, to me. So I thought I'd had breuseghemi twice, but it appears my old group way back when were greeni.

It happens a lot with uncommon or rare fish. I've had things here that turned out to be un catalogued species with no name. I had one African/Congo Basin tetra that was beautiful and lived for years, and that I had to send pictures of to the main expert at the American Museum of Natural History to get a name. Even then, they were "probablys".

The people on the ground in places like the Congo can be very knowledgeable, but there is so much no one knows. A three inch tetra caught for food may have slight differences from the one beside it in the net, but they travel under common foodfish names, in many cases. When we talked with fishers in Gabon, they were highly aware of the differences between the different elephant noses or Cichlids they ate, but they hadn't named the differences. They had no reason to.
 
@GaryE ... I think you over complicate things...

"Bloody Boil" seems descriptive enough...

and in my defense... at least using a common name, that might work for 4-5 different species... I'm less likely to be wrong...
 

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