billbobthegreat;4687811; said:
Oh that point was im hoping to get a male out of my little batch.
Can they be sexed at 3-4"?
I guess it depends on the individual Fish?
They can be sexed at that age by a relatively experienced eye. If you can stick some pics up here, then we can probably sex them for you.
If you have a batch of six, then the biggest one, with the biggest kok will almost certainly be the dominant male which is most likely to turn out to be the most impressive bodyshape-wise, which I expect would be the one you would want to keep. Unfortunately, it is probably the fish which is least likely to tolerate tankmates in the long run.
As for tankmates, many people try, and most fail. Loads of people claim to have all sorts of success and then you find out that their FH is only about 4" long. When an adult male FH gets some size on him, you need a VERY big tank generally to get away with any tankmates. But, then again, it can be done. There are vids on youtube of people who manage to get an adult FH living reasonably well in a community.
Key thing for increased chances of success are to get them living together with the FH being as young as possible. I would suggest trying any species that would not be seen as food by an adult FH, but also species which will not challenge the FH for dominance at all. Also, need to be able to take a bit of stick at times too. The most common tankmates seem to be blood parrots. OK, if that's your sort of thing.
Pleco's, various cats & birchirs might work. Another problem you might get is that fish like that may well not be able to compete with a FH for food. FH's, as I suspect you are discovering, are greedy little blighters. A large slow-moving and feeding fish "might" struggle to get enough food, unless you were very careful about target feeding them, if that were possible.
Silver dollars are another species that might get on OK with a FH.
Greetings from SOuthampton BTW ! I grew up around Lewes, and spent most of my teenage years fishing off Newhaven East pier !
