Male or Female Gold Saum?

[JCA]

thanks PeteFromTassie!

 

[PeteFromTassie]

;-) No dramas big-fella!

 

[Diamondhitch]

I've had numerous gt's and have bread them and I find that it is actually fairly easy to sex a good specimen when it is young. Males will often have better colour in the dorsal fin...not the red area, but the area below. They'll have more of the blue green spangles there whereas females have relatively little colour there, just pale green. Your fish doesn't show much colour there, so I think it's female. Also, females tend to get those little black spots on the operculum when in a mood, and they're pretty prominent on your fish. Males don't often exhibit those spots.

So, what would you say my 2.5"er is M/F?
Sorry for the crappy pic.

 

[SouthCentral]

Diamondhitch,

I should have been more clear in my post. I tried to put a bit of a disclaimer in there with the "Good Specimen" remark. Not that your fish isn't a good specimen, just that it's not obvious which sex it is. I should have said something like "There are telltale signs", but I've seen a few at the pet store that were hard when young, so you're right, you're not wrong Guess you've still never been wrong Judging by the colour in the dorsal fin, I would say female...however, the dorsal is starting to tail off already, which can suggest male. Also, there are a lot of spots all over the tail, which I see more common in males.

Although there are signs pointing either way, I would dare say that you have a male there that just hasn't had his dorsal colour up quite yet. It is true though that yours is a hard one.

I have seen gt's that were sexable at just over 1.5". I picked up a beautiful male at the lfs and planned on taking awful good care of him so that he could be a show specimen. Unfortunately, one day I thought that he looked awful lonely and decided to get him a mate. Bad idea, she killed him overnight (and she was the newbie to the tank! Not to mention slightly smaller).