sexing fish tetras

[chishnfips]

How do I sex my silvertip tetras, are the females less colourful than the male.

I have a shoal of 8 silvertips 6 of them are always in view the other 2 always hide. I dont know if the ones hiding are females or not. They get chased something chronic when they move out of their hiding place.

Can anyone help.

 

[WILDER]

With most tetra's the female is more rounded then the male and bigger in size.

 

[chishnfips]

if the female gets preggers. How can you tell?

would they hide away?

 

[Ami]

The males are much more of a bright copper colour than the females, that's the easiest way to tell them apart I find.

I always found that the males chased the females a lot when wanting to breed (any time there was plenty of food, especially live). If you've got 6 males and 2 females I'd hide too!

Ami

 

[chishnfips]

aye you are right there.

I think they might be getting frisky. Are they egg layers?

If any fry turned up I suppose they would be munched in no time.

 

[black angel]

most tetras are egg scatterers and would eat any young they come upon.

 

[Ami]

If you actually want them to breed, separate the males and females for at least a week and feed them a variety of live foods over the duration so they get fooled into believing food is plentiful!

Choose a likely pair and then place in a small breeding tank with soft slightly acidic water (between 5.5 & 7Ph) water, dim lights, some java moss and a fine mesh net over the bottom (or UGF panels which work just as well!).

Hopefully they'll spawn by the morning and you can just stick the parents back in the main tank.

Well, that's the way it's supposed to work but I never had the patience for it! Maybe I should have played them some romantic music when I dimmed the lights?

You may need to persevere with these guys, although the fry are much easier to raise than the parents are to breed. One thing though, silver tips can be a little on the aggressive side and often harass smaller fish - especially the traditional victim, the neon!

Ami

 

[chishnfips]

Sounds like too much for me at the moment, My two girls are enough nevermind a load of fish too. lol.

Cheers for the info ami.