Peacocks changing gender?

[Something Fishy Here]

In a bit new to keeping African cichlids. I've got some peacocks and haps and still filling out my tank but i was chatting with someone at the lfs who has kept several African tanks and bred them before, how extensively i don't know. He was telling me that in male only tanks it is common especially for peacocks for some to turn female. I asked is this just the submissive ones or lowest in the hierarchy changing colors to be like the females and he said not just coloring, they actually change gender.

Is there any accuracy to this? Are they capable of breeding? I'm not interested in breeding them, just curious as i haven't seen anything on here about this.

 

[Midwater]

I don't think it just African cichlids. I have heard about it and think it is a common phenomenon in all sort of fish.

 

[Milingu]

I don't think they really change their sex. They just look more and more like females.

 

[RD.]

No, they won’t change gender. They simply color down to avoid conflict with the dominant males.

 

[DJRansome]

I would say extremely rare...not common. I agree, in our tanks the male is masquerading as female to avoid attention.

To my knowledge there is one documented example of auratus changing gender. I can't find that article but I found this one.
Behaviorally Induced Sex Reversal of Metriaclima cf. livingstoni (Cichlidae) from Lake Malawi | Ichthyology & Herpetology (allenpress.com)

 

[Something Fishy Here]

Thanks, that's what i assumed was going on. They have all but 1 of their tanks labeled pretty well with common or abbreviated species names but 1 tank that occasionally says assorted African cichlids and they're pretty cheap, he said that's how they unload the males that lose all their coloring and are much harder to identify.

 

[RD.]

Assorted tanks often contain hormone treated fish, which are females that color up like males, until the juice wears off.

 

[RD.]

….. hence why they are pretty cheap. Like most things in life, you get what you pay for.

 

[Cal Amari]

Maybe thats why he thinks they're turning female, they were never male to begin with, just colored up from the hormones.

 

[DJRansome]

I would avoid vendors that have assorted tanks, and also those that use common names as opposed to scientific names. There are too many common names that are used for more than one species to really know what you are getting.