Boy or Girl Severum????

[freshwaterfishing]

I bought a super red severum last week and now today i bought what they called a spotted red severum and i was hoping to get a girl. Im preety sure the one i bought last week was a male. I can tell the anal fin is a different shape and they are definitly a different colour, but i herd a female is rare.
Can i get some opinions please

FEMALE ???











MALE

 

[ryansmith83]

It's hard to tell on the super reds. Almost all of them show spots on the face and gills which is usually a sign that you have a male. Based on that alone, I'd say these two are both male. The super reds could be different, though.

Your best bet is probably to find a gold female and try crossing the male super reds to her, if breeding is your intent.

 

[freshwaterfishing]

Well i was looking into trying to breed them, but I only have the room for the two so no breeding at this time, but i definitly like to try in the future, (when i upgrade again there in a 125 now but with a flordia gar and polleni and polys.
Id still really like to know the sex forsure though.

 

[hamfist]

Impossible to sex on looks alone with red-spotted/super red. If you are keen to know, net them out and have a look at their naughty bits. If they are different genders you will see a noticeable difference in the shape of the vent openings.

 

[freshwaterfishing]

ok ty ill try that later. ill try and get some pics of it to.

 

[peathenster]

I used to think most (if not all) super reds were males because none that I have seen lacked facial/head markings. Well, was I wrong. A friend sent me a few pictures of her pair. Got her permission to post here. The smaller one is female and the bigger one is male.

How does she know the smaller one is a female? It laid eggs multiple times

She commented that the female seemed to have even more red between her eyes, but not as much "markings". I'm not sure if that's obvious enough, and I'm certainly not going to sex them based on fins. However, the shape of the forehead seems to be different - the male has a more steep slope, which is also the case in many other SA cichlids.

 

[darippa]

The formula that works for me with Severums is females are round and males are more elongated. This works even when the fish are young.