Pic #4 shows a young male and 2 other siblings in the background. The rest are all Mozambique males.
How a male colors up really depends on their company.
The first and last males were kept in tanks where they were the only mozambique's.
In the second and third pics the males were kept with females.
Males will color more drastically when a female's around but you have to have a big tank with lost of hiding places for the females to keep them together.
I was able to keep my male with his females until he was 7". Then he started killing them when they wouldn't spawn. I went from 4 females to one and I keep her in my tank with SA/CA's.
A couple of weeks ago she went and colored up JUST like a spawning male. This confused me. I've seen females go very dark with blue cheeks to "disguise" themselves from other males or rivals but she didn't have any males around to hide from and no one else in the tank EVER picked on her. And then I noticed, she was guarding a corner of the tank. She was spawning with herself! I knew other fish do this but I've never seen mozambique's do it. She picked up the eggs and held them but being infertile they were eventually swallowed.
From her last fertile batch I saved 7 babies. One male colored up at 1" and began digging out spawning pits at that size too! Very cute little buggers, he apparently inhereted the mojo his daddy had.
When the batch was 2-3" I removed this dominant male to see if I had other males. Many times subdominant males won't color up and stay looking like a female for fear of being wailed on by a dominant male. Up popped another male. Removed him and up popped another one. By the last male I guess they'd gotten so excited about their newfound manliness I found my smallest female (2") holding a fertile batch of eggs! I got it down to 4 males and 3 females.
Besides the differences in color there are physical traits males develop. Dominant male mouths begin to widen as soon as they start coloring. Their heads slope a little longer too. I've noticed that subdominant males will supress this development with a sexually aggressive dominant fish around.
