mbunafishkeeper;1586931; said:
yellow lab, males will have a thick black line on the dorsalwhere as females have a thin black line along dorsal
Not entirely true. The quality of the yellow lab and genetic background play a huge part in determining gender by black fin markings alone. A high quality female can possess bold dorsal, anal and pelvic fin markings, and a poor quality male can have less bold, less thick, faded or even absent fin markings. The fact that yellow labs of different quality can often be found in the same tank makes this species, particularly the juveniles, challenging to correctly identify by sight alone.
If using black fin markings alone as a gender indicator (which I wouldn't recommend 100%), males tend to have darker pelvic fins (which are also proportionally larger than the females' in fully matured specimens).
mbunafishkeeper;1586937; said:
as for the other africans, eggspots on anal fin indicates male.
Again, not true in most instances. Many of my female mbuna's have eggspots to one extent or another, including a female red zebra with 8 eggspots (and she's mouthbrooded fry before so there's no question as to her gender). BOTH genders can possess eggspots. Males "usually" have larger, or more vibrant, or a larger quantity of them. "Usually". As an example, a male may have 3 egg spots or dozen while a female may have none or 10. That being the case, eggspots in most cases should not be considered a gender indicator.
jus1975;1583385; said:
How can I tell what sex my fish are. I would like to try breeding....
Electric Yellow Lab
red finned Albino Zebra
Kenyi African
Aurastus
bumblebee
BEHAVIOR combined with physical appearance will be your best indicator with monomorphic species such as electric yellow labs. Observing how they interact with each other and verified males of other species will provide great clues. The fish are well aware of each other's genders.
MATURED specimens are typically easier to sex than small juveniles, especially with the dimorphic species like the auratus, kenyi and bumblebee. Females retain the juvenile color patterns while the males undergo color transformations as they mature (so a juvenile male and female kenyi will be blue with black vertical stripes, the female will keep this pattern, the male will become a yellowish fish; the matured male bumblebee will become a very dark, sometimes near-completely black fish, the male auratus will become a dark fish with a lighter colored horizontal stripe).
Determining gender with small juvies is hard (unless they're dimorphic from birth such as Minos Reef Red Zebas), so if you want to acquire breed groups of each species, either acquire fully grown specimens or acquire more cichlids than you want and remove the excess males as they become apparent (for example, if you want 1 male kenyi and 3 female kenyi, get about 8 small juvies and trade off the males as their genders become revealed). For polygamous breeders like mbuna's 1 male per several females per species is ideal. If you don't remove the additional kenyi or auratus males, the dominants of each species will probably eliminate them from the tank (which brings us to another issue...)
You've got some very aggressive mbuna species and the 46gal will eventually become a killing field. I personally believe kenyi and auratus shouldn't be kept in anything less than a 75gal due to their hyperdomiant aggression (they're among the most aggressive mbuna species around). Bumblebees are also aggressive AND get LARGE (8-inches) so a 75gal would be recommended for them as well.
jus1975;1583385; said:
Open an account on an imaging hosting site such as photobucket, etc, upload your pics and copy the IMG tags into the text field.
