Re: [RML] Interesting way to sex bows
Gary Lange (gwlange at stlnet.com)
Mon, 5 Feb 2001 20:22:32 -0600
Another "unique" way to sex young lacustris. As far as I can tell it's the
only bow that this holds up for. And you can ask Charley Grimes for
verification as he was the one that noticed it. I had a tank of maybe 40+
1.25 inch lacustris. All of them bright blue and skinny but the males were
running around flashing each other, and "the females". I still don't think
they were quite old enough to figure out how to fertilize eggs but they had
the flashing part down pat. Charley was going to take a dozen fish back
with him and we wanted to get as close to six pairs as possible. At this
size it was really difficult, more like impossible to sex these guys. First
dorsal, second dorsal tricks didn't really seem to help at this size. You
could tell who a male was, before you put a net in the water but once they
saw the net they scattered and stopped flashing. We pulled a few and put
them into a flat sided bowl to attempt to sex them. When we were doing so
some of them "flashed" that bright white streak across their nose to their
dorsal just when they were dropped from the net into the new container.
When we saw one flash we knew we had a male and then tried to compare them
against some of the others to find females. Just couldn't see any
differences. So we bagged the flasher and started pulling out others. Some
of them also flashed. I've never really had another fish flash when I've
caught them and I don't know whether larger lacustris males do the same
thing. But we started counting flashers and non-flashers. If they didn't
flash they were "females". Charley confirmed 3 months later that he got
exactly what we had counted out, 6 males "flashers" and 6 females. I've
just started hatching another good size group of lacustris so I'm going to
pay careful attention to see if these guys will repeat it. Obviously when
these guys get around 3 inches the males start getting broader (from dorsal
to anal fin) and they become pretty easy to sex but at a young age they can
be one of the toughest.
gary lange
-----Original Message-----
From: william taylor <wtaylor at austin.rr.com>
To: rainbowfish at pcug.org.au <rainbowfish at pcug.org.au>
Date: Monday, February 05, 2001 3:01 PM
Subject: [RML] Interesting way to sex bows
I have 4 lacustris that I've had a hard time sexing. I suspect one is a
female judging by the first dorsal though it is a little inconclusive.
The fish can sex themselves better than I! It seems that by watching out
for courting behavior they have helped me determine the one I suspected of
being female is actually a female. We'll soon see. I'm going to set them
to breeding in a couple weeks to see if I, or should I say they, are right.
Lots of cross breeding happening in the community tank. I just watched a
male fluviatilis spawn with inornata. A few days ago a male incisus spawned
with herbertaxelrodi. It was interesting to watch the male inornata try to
protect "his" female from the fluviatilis.
Also, I've always read about bows spawning mainly in the morning. I've
watched them spawn several times this week in the afternoon and evening.
They don't seem to care what time it is?? Any similar observations?
Bill