Sexing Gold Jack Dempseys - Photo included

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krustyart

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Aug 20, 2012
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Merritt Island, Florida, United States
Generally I know how to sex jacks in several different ways. The easiest for quick ID is the pearling on the gill operculum. Males having more regularly spaced spots of similar size and females having squiggly lines or connected dots at irregular distances.

Most of my Gold JDs are still showing red through the gill plates due to immaturity(fish on the right). One has matured enough that it's starting to show it's pearling and the gill plate has become opaque. However the pearling is so heavy that it covers almost the whole gill plate.(fish on the left) Is this normal in Golds? Would you consider this a female because it does not have regular dotted pearls? Is this possibly a visual clue to a het for Electric Blue?(the breeder was working with platinums so it could be possibly het for EB.)

Any knowledgeable advice from someone experienced with Gold JDs, will be much appreciated.

Thanks

GoldJDs.jpg
 
Looks like a female to me too - too much blue to be male in my opinion. How big are they?

I raised a group of 6 from fry and ended up with 5 males and one female. I still have 2 males and a female and they are 5+ yrs old. The female shows the typical high concentration of blue on the lower gill operculum - not as much as yours but typical of a female JD. Don't ask for pictures - they have lived a rough life with other agressive fish and aren't much to look at these days. They spawned for me a few times at about a year old, but never was able to get the fry isolated before they ate them.

The question about whether it carries the electric blue gene can only be answered by breeding. Everyone would love to know if there "normal" looking or gold JD carries the blue gene - but you just can't tell. I have heard there was one EB breeder that had some of his BG's looking more colorful than the standard JD's, but never seen pictures to back it up. I am raising up some gold BG's right now and they look just like regular gold JD's - they don't look any different.
 
s1c said:
pretty young and pic blurry can you try another pic?
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I took dozens of pictures of this fish, many were in great focus, however each one that was in focus was washed out by the flash so you could not see the color of the gill covers. So it is what it is.
 
auratum said:
Looks like a female to me too - too much blue to be male in my opinion. How big are they?

I raised a group of 6 from fry and ended up with 5 males and one female. I still have 2 males and a female and they are 5+ yrs old. The female shows the typical high concentration of blue on the lower gill operculum - not as much as yours but typical of a female JD. Don't ask for pictures - they have lived a rough life with other agressive fish and aren't much to look at these days. They spawned for me a few times at about a year old, but never was able to get the fry isolated before they ate them.

The question about whether it carries the electric blue gene can only be answered by breeding. Everyone would love to know if there "normal" looking or gold JD carries the blue gene - but you just can't tell. I have heard there was one EB breeder that had some of his BG's looking more colorful than the standard JD's, but never seen pictures to back it up. I am raising up some gold BG's right now and they look just like regular gold JD's - they don't look any different.
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I will try to get her in a tank alone with my biggest male EBJD and see what happens.
 
krustyart said:
I took dozens of pictures of this fish, many were in great focus, however each one that was in focus was washed out by the flash so you could not see the color of the gill covers. So it is what it is.
Click to expand...

These are one of the most difficult fish to photograph and capture their true color. I have spend many hours trying to get decent photos of these fish with my cheap point and shoot camera. With flash they wash out, without flash you see no spangling as it gets lost in the lighter background. Many people think this fish is ugly if they haven't kept it, but it can be a real stunner in person. When my first batch was young I could not understand why they were called Gold JD's. To me they looked more pink in color - their belly showed lots of pink coloration and also red/pink spotting in their fins. But as mine reached maturity it became clear why they are called Gold JD's. The get a nice yellow gold color on their back and even their lips turn yellow (looks like yellow lipstick).

Keep trying with your photos - you will get a few decent ones, but they never do the fish justice.
 
auratum said:
These are one of the most difficult fish to photograph and capture their true color. I have spend many hours trying to get decent photos of these fish with my cheap point and shoot camera. With flash they wash out, without flash you see no spangling as it gets lost in the lighter background. Many people think this fish is ugly if they haven't kept it, but it can be a real stunner in person. When my first batch was young I could not understand why they were called Gold JD's. To me they looked more pink in color - their belly showed lots of pink coloration and also red/pink spotting in their fins. But as mine reached maturity it became clear why they are called Gold JD's. The get a nice yellow gold color on their back and even their lips turn yellow (looks like yellow lipstick).

Keep trying with your photos - you will get a few decent ones, but they never do the fish justice.
Click to expand...

My Golds have this "Iced Tea" color to them. A kind of transparent brown overlaying the yellow-white color. I have never seen that before in a "Gold" and I wonder if their mutation is not the same as that of what most Golds are. Again, these pictures don't show that color very well but it does show a lot of the yellow on the fish on the left. Philippine Blue Angelfish are also hard to photograph in much the same way. My profile pic is a Philippine Blue but almost none of the blue showed up in that picture. Despite that, the same photo won the October photo contest and the 2012 yearly photo contest on "The Angelfish Forum II" website. :headbang2:tropicalf
 
For another photo try, you could use an extra light on top of your tank, with camera flash off

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