female juvenile lamarck to male?

[dendrite]

About 4 or 5 months ago I acquired a two inch female lamarck angel and a two inch female watanabei angel . Both doing very well in a 180 gallon reef. Lately the growth of the lamarck has far outstripped the watanabei and has grown long streamers and is now clearly the dominant member of the duo. Can they become male under the proper circumstances?

 

[Dmorty217]

Yes all large angels are born female and dominant ones change to male. Sounds exactly like what's happening even though they are by the same species this will often happen

 

[dendrite]

thanks, it will be interesting to watch the transformation. Do you know if the female striping on the lamarck will also change?

 

[Dmorty217]

thanks, it will be interesting to watch the transformation. Do you know if the female striping on the lamarck will also change?

Here is a picture of a male and female, they look very similar other than the streamers so I'm not 100% sure about that

 

[falconut]

Dmorty217 - That looks like two females in the photo. The top stripe on a female drops down near the tail like your photo and on the male it goes straight back to the tail. See the photo below:

 

[Dmorty217]

Dmorty217 - That looks like two females in the photo. The top stripe on a female drops down near the tail like your photo and on the male it goes straight back to the tail. See the photo below:

I know that wasn't a male, I miss spoke. I was looking for a transitioning female picture and that was the best I could come up with to see if indeed that's what is going on with the OPs

 

[dendrite]

Yes , that's the difference in striping that I was thinking about. It will be interesting to see what happens. Will post again if it changes

 

[jedi58]

I have the same pair in my tank a lamarck and a watanabei. The watanabei is 2" and the lamarck is 4.5" and just turned male last month. The main changes you will see on the lamarck are the gold crown on the head and the ventral fins will turn jet black. The streamers will also turn white and grow much faster. The change takes about a month to complete. I grew the lamarck out from a 1" baby and it took about 18 months to reach 4.5". The watanabei was also started at 1". I recently tried to introduce a female bellus of 2.5" and the lamarck had no issue but the watanabei chased her all over the tank. I put the bellus in another tank for now and will try to reintroduce with an acclimation box before long so be careful if you try to expand the harem.

 

[albano]

I had to remove my male Lamarck because it caused my male Bellus to revert back to female, and the same thing happened when I added a trio of Spotbreasts...there seems to be only room for 1 male Genicanthus angel, even in my 8' 450g DT