CA Cichlids -- Are Males Rare?

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ragin_cajun

ragin_cajun

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Have you ever put 8-10 2 inch fish in a tank at any point in the past? Did you grow them out long enough to a big enough size that you could easily sex them? .....what percentage of fry grew up to be male?

Because I'm starting to seriously doubt that fish are 50/50 male/female. I'm wondering if CA Cichlid fry grow out to become something like 20%, or 30% male, the rest female?

Because nobody's "luck" is so bad that they go for 1 for 10 over 3 years, when the universe lays even odds. I have 10 Vieja in my big tank, they're all 1-2 years old, all over 8 inches, and only ONE of them I can confidently say is male based on body/head shape. The rest are female.
 
I don't know about normal percentages, but I do know if pH and hardness is higher than optimum for certain species, one sex mayl dominate, tor if temp is too high, or too low a certain sex be be dominant. In my case when Alcolapia alcalicus spawned in my tank in the low 80s, I ended up with all females.
This is one of the reasons I try to research natural waters where my fish are found.
If night temps drop into the 60s in some areas, I put heaters on timers to allow for day night differences, and or if certain cichlids such as Gymnogeophagus appreciate a cool down, it will be attempted.
If certain species spawn when tannins are high due to seasonal changes, I will try to mimic these changes if spawning a certain fish is my goal.
An example is Mayaheros beanii from the northern Pacific area of Mexico, this is not a strictly tropical habitat, and my beanii spawned at a temp of 68'F.
 
What about for Vieja? Think something could happen to cause a batch of Vieja fry to come out all female? I wonder. Water temp could be hard to control during certain seasons for a breeder..........maybe fish were born during a cold snap, or heat of summer????



Another thing I wonder about is this.....I have occasionally gotten fish that were runts. Just won't grow. Well, I recently had a batch of my own fry, I forgot to put the dechlor in after a WC, half died, the other half lived. But the half that lived....wouldn't grow for nothing. That could happen at any fish breeder's place, easy mistake to make, especially with a bunch of tanks. I do it with 3 tanks, I'm sure it's got to happen with 50-100 tanks? At least once or twice?

You just don't know if you didn't breed the fish yourself.
 
I've been breeding cichlids for quite some time now starting with the common convicts, cross breeding flowerhorns, severums and viejas. I never treat the water during any water changes...I don't recommend it but I just don't...never had a problem. The key is to only change 20-30%...never 100%. I do keep temps in high 80s and city water here is rather hard.

From experience with fry, males tend to have a much more rapid growth rate than females. I would often times sell off or give away the larger fry first so smaller ones can compete for food. Breeders or vendors may follow this practice as well. Overall, I get a pretty good balance in males/females. I'm just saying, if all the fry are of the same size when you order them, there's a chance that they may be of the same sex and the so call runts you mentioned may be the smaller ones (possibly the slow growing females) of the batch. Next time, maybe order a combination in fry sizes, which may require individual packaging to avoid beat up fish upon delivery.

Just throwing out my thoughts.
 
VERY interesting! I would never have thought of that. But, it makes perfect sense.
 
I have also found that in many cases males in a spawn will outgrow, and kill many of their smaller female siblings.
But I had just the opposite happen with Vieja bifasciata, where I kept half dozen fry, and 5 females grew exceedingly quickly, and out ate, and harassed one individual. That one turned out to be the only male, and after I separated him from the badgering females into his own tank, quickly out grew them all. Here he is, just after I gave him to a friend.
 
Funny. I was just thinking about this yesterday. I originally got 20 Trimac. out of the twenty, ten of them were male. I thought that was a VERY high number. I think overall the break would be more heavily weighted to producing females. I think that makes sense from the simple procreation standpoint. But that's pure speculation on my part. As Duanes points out, certain water parameters can push the male/female numbers one way or another.

A while back there was an account of a hobbyist having a single citrinellum (Midas cichlid) in a tank with a pleco. No other con specific or other fish in the tank. That fish laid eggs AND fertilized them. I knew that Dr. Barlowe had worked with Midas and that there were instances when a fish would change sex under certain circumstances. But I thought this was pure BS. I asked Dr. Paul Loiselle if it was possible. He said that YES...in fact there was another instance of this happening with one of his colleagues. He said it would be wonderful if the people that had it would make the fry available to be studied..and see if it carried forward with them as adults. Unfortunately the people who had the fish were novices. THey actually removed all of the gravel so the "little fishes would be able to find their mom." No idea where it went from there, but needless to say...no one got fry.
 
I can tell you this having Midas breeding over 50,000 of them easily that the number for me were more females than males... That's according to costumers telling me they're laying eggs. I'd say for me it was like 60 percent females 40 percent males.

What's funny is the largest one I ever had was 5 times bigger than any fry ended up being a female. Shape and temperament is male but laid eggs so yeah lol

To be honest I think there is genetics and a lot of variables that come into play.

Maybe @frankcastle can shed some light. If my tagging doesn't work if you don't see it blue can someone tag him for me please. This site is making me mad lol
 
Aquamojo said:
Funny. I was just thinking about this yesterday. I originally got 20 Trimac. out of the twenty, ten of them were male. I thought that was a VERY high number. I think overall the break would be more heavily weighted to producing females. I think that makes sense from the simple procreation standpoint. But that's pure speculation on my part. As Duanes points out, certain water parameters can push the male/female numbers one way or another.

A while back there was an account of a hobbyist having a single citrinellum (Midas cichlid) in a tank with a pleco. No other con specific or other fish in the tank. That fish laid eggs AND fertilized them. I knew that Dr. Barlowe had worked with Midas and that there were instances when a fish would change sex under certain circumstances. But I thought this was pure BS. I asked Dr. Paul Loiselle if it was possible. He said that YES...in fact there was another instance of this happening with one of his colleagues. He said it would be wonderful if the people that had it would make the fry available to be studied..and see if it carried forward with them as adults. Unfortunately the people who had the fish were novices. THey actually removed all of the gravel so the "little fishes would be able to find their mom." No idea where it went from there, but needless to say...no one got fry.
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I think there is something to be said about this sex change that I have also been reading about. I have been convinced before that I had 5 females and 1 male - only to remove the pair and then one of the 4 females left changes shape and attitude quickly and we have a spawn again - only to remove that pair and then one of the remaining 2 females does the same thing again. Clownfish do the opposite - all are born male and the largest becomes female - remove here and the next largest becomes female.

Regarding males growing faster, I have seen many times when the females grow faster - it can take several inches in the Americans, from what I have seen, for the males to start to break from the pack in size.
 
Ah, yes. The sex change thing. I'd read something about that once, and I just chalked it up to nonsense, or a rarity.

Fish can change their gender.....at what age? Is that only at young age/small size? Or can a 6-8 inch fish change gender, too? Is gender in a fish controlled by environment? Or not? Do we know?
 
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