Bigtay
Aquarium Advice Activist
When buying baby African cichlid, what do you look for to tell female and male? I heard different stories....
hal.lc said:While I do agree that fin size and egg spots can indicate sex, they are not a sure thing and should not be relied upon to control sex ratio. Although it can help when selecting young cichlids, you should still buy extra to allow for the removal of extra males. Your best bet will be to grow out your stock until the males of any dimorphic species you have begin to color up. Then it will be easy to remove any troublesome males.
For any monomorphic cichlid species, for instance Ps. demasoni, it would be best to overstock and then remove overly aggressive fish as they appear.
In my experience you will begin to see your mbuna males color up at around 2". Of course this will vary from species to species and even fish to fish.
What size tank are you stocking? Perhaps we could help you with your stock list to allow the greatest chance of success.
mfdrookie516 said:venting is the only way at this point
mfdrookie516 said:You could do probably 24 right now, getting 8 of each fish. That gives you room to rehome any extra males and get a 1m-4f ratio. I with those fish, that would work fine.
From the pics, it looks like you have acei, red zebras, and auratus. Some swear up and down that auratus are the nastiest meanest fish alive. I have 2 males in my 150g and they get along fine. They're nowhere near as aggressive as my kenyi. The auratus wouldn't be my first choice, but if you are set on them, I think you'll be fine. Just make sure to provide lots and lots of rock for them all to claim territory and seek shelter
Some swear up and down that auratus are the nastiest meanest fish alive. I have 2 males in my 150g and they get along fine. They're nowhere near as aggressive as my kenyi. The auratus wouldn't be my first choice, but if you are set on them, I think you'll be fine. Just make sure to provide lots and lots of rock for them all to claim territory and seek shelter
mfdrookie516 said:That doesn't mean anything right now. You won't know how they're truly going to act until they reach maturity.
I'd have to agree that male Kenyi's can be just as mean and nasty. Mine dominates my tank.