i have heard and seen and have been asked alot by many people about theirs sexes and the way to distinguish them, even in Thailand i get asked by some keepers.
before even needing to see the fish, there is two questions to screen the basics of a male to a female; which gives around an 80% correct answer:
- is it banana gold color (male), copper red / brown color (female)
- is the body long (male) in shape or squarish (female) looking shape?
* these are the two most easy ways to distinguish them, however there are obstacles that create confusion and quarrel; such as mine is banana yellow and square looking, or its long and its copper! etc etc.
so in order to be able to distinguish them using this simple method, you have to understand how you are keeping your fish.
1- these fish's original food is live fishes, such as bettas, baby snakeheads, small frogs, crickets, small breams, etc in the wild. so feeding them or changing their food diet to dead things, prawns, or dog food looking pellets will distort their body shape. ( i never feed my fishes these things as i believe it shortens their life span and they don't need to exercise to get their food but of course your feed is more expsensive than me having to net around some ponds and find plenty of small fishes)
i have a friend who used prawns before on a CT i gave him, which was a 16 inch male, i never fed it other than live ghost shrimp and fish but after two months feeding it prawn (took a week of starving to change its habits) i got so fat it looked like a female. and this also happened to other of my friends CT's as well.
so the feed can disorientate is body shape so only its natural diet will determine its true sex.
2- so with food out of the way, its true sex can be determined with the environment it lives in.
assume you have five CT's of exactly 12inch together, with one or two females and the other males, their femaleness will stand by tending to be more agressive towards the males but more neutral towards the same sex, unless there is a size difference.
the color of the females tend to fluctuate more than the males, you can see this when they are frightened or trying to show their agressiveness to protect themselves or their young, they will erect their top back fin and their scales erect out a bit creating a semi grey metallic color and tjheir gills stretch out a bit (similar to the siamese fighting betta but nowhere near as much). only females would do this, which is assumed is used to protect their young. whilst i haven't seen males with this behavior before.
so i hope this has been some use to you all and as stated before, males tend to have the banana color, but in my past experiences, i have kept over quite a large amount of large sizes in a concrete pond, and there were quite a few fat boys around even when the diet where whole shoals of small freshwater mullet.
good luck and hope it was some use.
before even needing to see the fish, there is two questions to screen the basics of a male to a female; which gives around an 80% correct answer:
- is it banana gold color (male), copper red / brown color (female)
- is the body long (male) in shape or squarish (female) looking shape?
* these are the two most easy ways to distinguish them, however there are obstacles that create confusion and quarrel; such as mine is banana yellow and square looking, or its long and its copper! etc etc.
so in order to be able to distinguish them using this simple method, you have to understand how you are keeping your fish.
1- these fish's original food is live fishes, such as bettas, baby snakeheads, small frogs, crickets, small breams, etc in the wild. so feeding them or changing their food diet to dead things, prawns, or dog food looking pellets will distort their body shape. ( i never feed my fishes these things as i believe it shortens their life span and they don't need to exercise to get their food but of course your feed is more expsensive than me having to net around some ponds and find plenty of small fishes)
i have a friend who used prawns before on a CT i gave him, which was a 16 inch male, i never fed it other than live ghost shrimp and fish but after two months feeding it prawn (took a week of starving to change its habits) i got so fat it looked like a female. and this also happened to other of my friends CT's as well.
so the feed can disorientate is body shape so only its natural diet will determine its true sex.
2- so with food out of the way, its true sex can be determined with the environment it lives in.
assume you have five CT's of exactly 12inch together, with one or two females and the other males, their femaleness will stand by tending to be more agressive towards the males but more neutral towards the same sex, unless there is a size difference.
the color of the females tend to fluctuate more than the males, you can see this when they are frightened or trying to show their agressiveness to protect themselves or their young, they will erect their top back fin and their scales erect out a bit creating a semi grey metallic color and tjheir gills stretch out a bit (similar to the siamese fighting betta but nowhere near as much). only females would do this, which is assumed is used to protect their young. whilst i haven't seen males with this behavior before.
so i hope this has been some use to you all and as stated before, males tend to have the banana color, but in my past experiences, i have kept over quite a large amount of large sizes in a concrete pond, and there were quite a few fat boys around even when the diet where whole shoals of small freshwater mullet.
good luck and hope it was some use.