Sexing Young Pearls

[koinukun]

Hi everyone!

I recently bought a trio of young pearl gouramis. I asked the guy in the pet shop if he could try and get a M/F/F trio. He said he's do his best and also mentioned that if what he gave me wasn't what I wanted I can exchange them at a later date. I have tried every possible way of sexing them but I think they're still too young to tell yet. They're probably about 3" max at the moment.

But I've noticed that out of the 3, two of them square each other up and lock mouths similar to cichlids very frequently while the other one is off doing it's own thing. Could this be a good indication that I have 2 males and a female or are they just being angsty teenagers?

I'm going to hang off returning any until I'm 100% sure, then I'll get the LFS to get me in some lager ones so it'll be easier to sex them.

Thanks for any input you can give!

~koinukun

 

[sylvia]

Can you get photos of them side-on?
Even at 3", females tend to look quite a bit plumper than males but you probably won't be able to spot any fin or color differences just yet.
The two locking mouths are almost certainly going to turn out to be male but that doesn't preclude the third from being a male as well. I should add that locking mouths is actually rather unusual in pearls and I'd be careful - how large is your tank?

 

[EcoGeek]

I would wait til the get mature. Males get much more exxagerated finnage, and are much brighter than females. And like sylvia said, females are plumper than males.

 

[koinukun]

Thanks for both of your replies!

I can't get any photos unfortunately as my camera's died ;_;
As for my tank, it's an AquaOne AR850 which is around 40g/155 liters. It's heavily planted with both free swimming space and territory markers and things to break line of sight between territories. I haven't seen any damage or injury on the two boisterous ones. A frayed fin here and there but they heal within the day. Tank mates are also fine I do believe, the only one that shows any sign of aggression to the pearls is the angel and then only if they go into his corner, where he will scoot them out right away.