I need help with rainbowfish. Please help me if you have rainbows :)

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Plec123

Plec123

Polypterus
MFK Member
Jun 26, 2009
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ok, so, i was gonna get silver dollars, but, ive decided that i wanna keep my plants.
so, ive decided to try rainbows. I'm gonna get either boesmani or turquoise rainbows, but ive got some questions:

i'm probably gonna get 3 rainbows, maybe 4. ive read that problems will arise if there are more males than females.
is this true?
if so, is there a way for me to sex them in the store so i dont encounter this problem? (the ones in the store are juveniles, like 1.5"-2")
thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
 
i looked through that site, thanks for posting it! couldnt find anything answering my question though...
 
From my experience, males tend to squable - but we're not talking cichlids fighting here, so it's all relative. But as long as there is enough room they should be o.k. Just have more females than males. 3-1 proably should work. Sexing is not that hard, but it isn't as simple as a quick glance. I always went by the moniker that the males were always the most brightly/deeply colored fish in the tank, especially the nose and the slope of the forehead (look for glowing iridecent color). Boesmani are, in my opinion one of the most beautiful freshwater fish, but, if memory serves me - to see them at thier best, like any fish really - they need super clean water.
 
ok, cool. thanks for your help!
btw i think im going with turquoise rainbows, because theyre bigger and IMO have more color...
 
Heh, I luckily was able to successfully sex my turquoise rainbows in store at that size. The cool part was that I actually had intended to get Boesmanis but decided they were too expensive, and had never even heard of a turquoise rainbow before.

Anyway, I just looked for their eventual sex differences. Males will have a much deeper body, and females will be more pale. There's a good picture that shows the difference between the two here, just look for that in the stock they have in store.
 
males will go at it a bit but rainbows are more show than actual fight. and from my experiences the turquois rarely fight. if ya have mature males it's pretty cool to see them try to out do each other displaying fins and colors but like i said its mainly "all talk"
 
Sweet. Ill keep that in mind. Right now im trying to lookat all of my options for new fish and ive also been looking at cichlids, headstanders, and wolf fish.
 
Be careful if you feed medium/large sized pellets - several of my rainbows choked cos apparantly they have quite narrow throats but are still greedy eaters.
 
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