blue dolphin moorii cichlid sex? breeding them?
- Thread starter Plum7
- Start date
I have bred this species for many years, just recently got rid of my last few moorii. The sex ratio is not that important with this species, if they grow out together & you give them enough room. Your biggest issue is going to be keeping the loaches away when the females are dropping eggs.
oh really? so i have more than 1 male shouldn't be too much of a issue? the top 3 were the most recently added in, i read a article that sexing by the anal fins of the dolphin is a way of doing it as well is that true? long and pointy past the tail fin male and shorter and rounded blunt not past the tail fin female? if so would you agree pic 2 and 3 females, pic 4 and 5 males, pic 6 top female, bottom male, 7 female, and i was a bit unsure of pic 1 the anal fin is a bit in the middle but maybe female? what do you think?
I wonder if they would breed in a community setting? I have a pair of livingstoni which have successfully bred and spawned in this tank with the loaches around and i did see a few baby fish swimming around. I'm surprised they have survived and not been eaten by the other fish since there is many fish in the tank.
I wonder if they would breed in a community setting? I have a pair of livingstoni which have successfully bred and spawned in this tank with the loaches around and i did see a few baby fish swimming around. I'm surprised they have survived and not been eaten by the other fish since there is many fish in the tank.
Yeah, that's not always 100%, but I would agree on your male/female list. In fact I believe that I have looked at some of these pics in the past? My last breeding group was male heavy, 5 males, 3 females, but they were also in a 6ft tank by themselves.
3 males
female with dominant male
3 males
female with dominant male
Oh nice males you got there! You never had problems with that many males in a species only tank? Your males are all pretty big around how old were they in the pictures? I’m guessing some of my females are already nearly full grown but the males have yet to reach full potential.
It actually started out as 6 males, 3 females, and I removed one male at about the 18 month mark as I could tell at that point that he was going to be a problem. I bought the group of 9 moorii at approx. 2 - 2.5", so accurate sexing was near impossible at that size. I knew that some were males, and some were females, and that was about it. Over time they generally played nice, the alpha male is the darker one in pic #1.
In those pics they were approx. 6 yrs of age, and at the end of the run in that tank they shared the 125 gallon with a group of 10 or 12 L. caeruleus "Ruarwe", basically an orangish colored yellow lab.
In those pics they were approx. 6 yrs of age, and at the end of the run in that tank they shared the 125 gallon with a group of 10 or 12 L. caeruleus "Ruarwe", basically an orangish colored yellow lab.
Actually surprisingly pic 6 male and sometimes pic 4 male chases the pic 1 fish quite a bit especially 6 male. That’s why I wasn’t sure about pic 1 since it’s anal fin is in between lengths for a male and female.
Also I got pic 1-3 dolphins from one seller and he said they never tried to breed or any flashing in the tank they were housed with 1 extremely large male which was same age twice the size of them but he was sold about a year back and he was pretty sure all 3 were females unless one was a sub male but you never know what people say since you might end up with the opposite of what you get lol
ok thanks. Also the 3 new bigger females i got are bigger and likely older than the 3 males in the tank since females grow slower would this still work with them breeding with the younger males? the males seem to be more into chasing each other around and sometimes chasing the females but no sign of breeding behavior yet. They all seem more interested in playing within the strong water current at the moment lol.