Bangaii Cardinals- SEX????

[fishnugget]

How can I tell the difference between a male and female ?


DO YOU HAVE PICTURES OF THE DIFFERENCES. i HAVE ALREADY READ THE STOCK ANSWER. i STILL CAN'T TELL

 

[Fragmented]

From what I understand there is no surefire way to know until you see the male holding. If you have 2 that don't fight you either have 2 young males, 2 females, or a pair. Luck of the draw. Chances are better for a male if the 2nd fin is very long.

 

[David M]

I think it is generally agreed that are no are no SURE external indications of sex in Bangaii. There are some general tendancies (such as the longer dorsal, broader jaw, etc) but these are not fail safe. IME behavior is your best indicator and much easier to observe in a group of 7-8 ( or more) rather than just two fish. A dominant male will emerge and "herd" the rest into a corner. He will select a mate from the group who will have free run of the tank while he holds the others captive. At this point you need to remove the pair, otherwise he may eventually start to kill off any "rival" males in the group. Once you remove that pair the process will likely repeat itself again, and ( in theory) again and again until there are no more males.

It may sound like an expensive proposition at first but you might easily pull 3 pairs from 8 fish, if you keep only one you should be able to sell off the known pairs for enough to recover your investment

 

[km133688]

I just aquired a friends breeding pair of banggais (he is moving to germany). Even though they are a known pair, I could not tell the difference between them till the males jaw expanded. The middle of his jaw will drop a little, kind of like a second chin so to speak. Anyway, he swallowed what I figure was a new set of eggs.

But like I said, couldn't tell the difference. In fact all the "potential signs" were backwards. The female is just a hair bigger, her fine is longer, there is no clear "angle of swim" difference (it was supposed that a male floats angled down (head below belly) with female swimming angled up), and I can't see any difference in the rounding where the tail meets the body.

But, I have noticed this... they act different. The female is way more skitish. She hides in a cave when startled. So maybe the key is not in how they look, so much as in how they act.

Hey Dr. Marini, maybe there is an idea for a study, "Distinguishing the Sex of Banggai using Behavioral Queues".

Well, its an idea I guess. Good luck, Kevin

 

[raddogz]

My female is the bold one. She eats just about anything I put in the tank - frozen brine, mysis, cyclop-eeze, flake, pellets, etc.

The male is much shyer and will only take frozen brine, mysis, or flake.

The female is larger than the male. The only way I can tell is "spine" on the female is bent (I think when I netted them from a tank transfer years ago).