Jack Dempsey - Visual Growth Rate

[elting44]

I can see those he looks good nice and chunky

Yeah, he is getting bigger now. It is a shame about the Gallery being down. I will take some more shots this week.

Thanks for the comments

 

[elting44]

Time for another update...

The gallery is still down, so I will have to attach these rather than imbed.

The fish is doing great, He is eating Hikari Gold still, as well as earthworms, bait shrimp (thanks skerzfan), and whatever I catch live to feed him (horseflys, grasshoppers, june-bugs).

He is at least 6 inches long, and has started to put on some bulk. He is a voracious eater, and will literally come up and out of the water to take earthworm and shrimp pieces out of my hand, I will try to get a video of it, its pretty cool.

His colors are starting to get more intense, not to shabby for a $2.49 fish from PetCo.

Still doing 25% Weekly WCs.

Enjoy!

8-4-2008 Week 15

 

[BTD930]

nice

 

[X24]

Amazing! Yours is just a gorgeous specimen.....I'm hoping when i can split up my stock through a new tank that my JD's growth rate increases because mines trailing yours by a couple inches and i got it around the same time as yours....

 

[kiokie72006]

Naturally darker and lighter Dempseys I've yet to see. I bred them several times and produced hundreds of fry and I never noticed lighter or darker types. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, just that I've never seen it. I sexed by the bars as well as the gill plate markings but I had better luck with using the darker bodies of the females. When they are young it's to hard to tell if the gill plate freckles will increase or stay the same.

My money is still on the female.

I say we take votes and see who's right and wrong. No hard feelings just a fun game seeming how this thread is going to be around for awhile.

here's some pics of mine. the bigger is lighter, & the smaller is pretty dark. I dont know what sex they are, guessing bigger the male cos of pointed fins?

 

[Burtle]

Turned out to grow into a very nice JD with all round good structure.

 

[jackdaniel]

I too think your looking at a female. I bred dempseys for awhile and that looks just like a small female.

Males, even at a young age don't show the black barring that the females do. They do have bars but they are not as prodominant as the females. That's usually the method I used to seperate potential pairs. It worked about 90% of the time.

I'll be watching the growth rate, good luck. I still love Dempseys.

Hi all. I'm rather new to fish keeping on a large scale, but I just got two JDs (one male, one female) and I can CLEARLY tell the difference. Although they are the same age, the male is about twice the size, shimmers with blue and sparkles like confetti. He has no black lines. The female, on the other hand, is much paler in color and exhibits a few vertical black bars. I'd say 90% chance that's a female. Props for my first post!

 

[jackdaniel]

OK. Scratch that. Looking at the pics later in the thread, it's clearly a male. I guess it takes a while to develop its full colors.

Do you think the substrate helps to bfring out the colors? I'm using the same size/color gravel and the male is beautiful!

 

[danitolaboy]

very nice JD

 

[TrikkyMakk]

here's some pics of mine. the bigger is lighter, & the smaller is pretty dark. I dont know what sex they are, guessing bigger the male cos of pointed fins?

The one with all the blue on the chin is female.