GBR gender and type???

he is a GBR long fin, 100% it is a male.
I have seen them labeled as blue veiled rams..

thanks drowki. He is much younger than my female who has already killed one other male I tried to hook her up with but she has let this one live for over a week so I think she has accepted him.

Definitely a male. All you have to do is look for a pink belly. GBR are one of the easiest fish to sex for this reason. No pink belly then its a male, pink belly and it's a female. Plain and simple

iamtechno said:

Definitely a male. All you have to do is look for a pink belly. GBR are one of the easiest fish to sex for this reason. No pink belly then its a male, pink belly and it's a female. Plain and simple

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I have had some females that did not display the pink belly for a month or two. Usually i look for the pink belly, the lack of bright colors, false black eye, and the dorsal fin..

Lucky he didnt ask for sexing of an EBR, it takes me a while to determine the sex (10-20 mins of watching them swim and interact)

jmf3460 said:

thanks drowki. He is much younger than my female who has already killed one other male I tried to hook her up with but she has let this one live for over a week so I think she has accepted him.

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they may get a little aggressive, but these fish are little sensitive with transportation and acclimation. I have lost rams a week after, sure they were a little picked on. But I have had some thrive after that.

They are one of my favorite fish and a close second are clown loaches.

there are several ways to sex rams. and other dwarf cichlids. but rams more so.

female rams generally have a pink belly, although some will not show a pink belly whatsoever. they also have a blue sheen over there black dot. the front rays of the dorsal fin are short are as the pelvic fins.more of a flat head

males have elongated rays in the front of the dorsal fin. and elngated pelvic fins. no blue sheen over the black dot. no pink belly. more of a rounded forehead

jmf3460 said:

I usually look for the pink belly and lack of sheen over the spot. At the lfs I saw no sheen no pink but now in my tank with led lights I see tons of sheen over the spot but still no pink belly. Imma go with male, it was my gut decision I don't know why I questioned myself. Look how much different he is than my female though...

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Left one is a male, the right one is a female. 100%
I breed those buggers, i would hope i can sex them =P

I've never heard of or seen a mature female GBR with no pink belly. Unless it is a more natural form it will always have it unless she is fairly young or in very poor condition showing no color at all. It's the way they've been bred out. Also the blue spangling is very ineffective for sexing GBR. The only sure way to tell is the pink belly or lack there of

Electric Blue Ram are much more difficult to determine the sex than GBR as the pink belly is all but totally covered up. At this point, you need to look at things such as the body shape/size and the finnage. Some males and females are easy to distinguish as they'll have very striking features (typically the males) but once all of those are gone at the lfs, it can be really tough to get a pair. Once you've spent enough time dealing with these fish and staring at these fish it gets a little easier. When I first got into it, the guy helping me showed me how to indentify them and little things to look for and he could pick out males vs females like it was nothing and it blew me away. Now after dealing with them for so long I'm starting to very easily identify even the most difficult of them.

iamtechno said:

I've never heard of or seen a mature female GBR with no pink belly. Unless it is a more natural form it will always have it unless she is fairly young or in very poor condition showing no color at all. It's the way they've been bred out. Also the blue spangling is very ineffective for sexing GBR. The only sure way to tell is the pink belly or lack there of

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The blue speck long may be in effective but in combo with the other things listed is a sure fire way to tell. I do agree though I have had males with blue covering the black spot,

As for the pink belly I've had quite a few females that were very healthy. Deep face mask and bright coloring with no pink belly at a matured age. They could have been closer to natural form but I doubt it. I have also had females with a bright deep pink belly, there are multiple things to look at when sexing gbr. Aside from the belly the dorsal fin and pelvic fins are always a dead give away I have never seen a female with elongated rays or elongated pelvic fins.

After dealing with them for awhile now, I've never heard of a female GBR with no pink belly. Thats one of the features they acquired through years of selective breeding. A female German Blue Ram will always have a pink belly or at least a hint of pink where as a male will not. Every other way to identify Rams is not 100%. I'll repeat, the only 100% way to identify a somewhat mature to mature female GBR is the pink belly. I'll say it again, it's a feature of years of line breeding. The mottled black spot is much more accurate on wild type or closer to wild Rams.

I had a female GBR that died of old age the other day (I wanted to cry, best female Ram I've ever had) and if you would have looked at her by an of those other "rules" you would have sworn she was a male. The only way to identify her was by her overall size and the pink belly. She had a few dorsal spines that were huge and even her dorsal and anal fin were large like a male. The pink belly is a dead giveaway.

Hey I'm just sayin. I've had females with no pink belly. The longest I had a pair that were breeding was 2.5 years. The female never had a pink shade on her stomach.

Yeah in those pictures you can definitely identify the male and female. From what I understand the Mikrogeophagus Ramirezi was first introduced in 1947 and in 1948 misidentified as apistogramma which is obviously not the case and different names such as psuedogeophagus and psuedoapistogramma bounced around until 1998 at which point Mikrogeophagus was adopted as the name. There have been different strains bred separately both in Asia and in Germany. I believe a true German Blue Ram will always have a pink belly. There have been many breeders in Asia and I don't think that they had the pink belly in their rams but they had Rams very similar to German ones but not the same. You could've had an Asian/German Blue Ram or just an Asian on altogether. Even a few years ago there seemed to be a problem with hormone filled GBR coming from Asia that lose their color and had horrible genetics but I think it's gotten better but you still have to watch Asian Ram's for this reason.

Yeah I know the easiest way to tell if the gbr or rb has been pumped with hormone is to stress them out and if they stay the same color and don't fade they've Ben pumped with hormone. I haven't tried it. But that's what I have been told.

I love dwarf cichlids. They have all the personality of any other regular cichlid, but small and more docile.

Yeah dwarfs cichlids are the best. And I can't say for certain cause I wasn't in to fish 15-20 years ago but I'm pretty sure in Asia they've been breeding Blue Rams but it wasn't until out of Germany the German Blue Ram became available which made them very popular due to their color which the Asian Rams never had and now everybody wanted the German Blue Ram but it seems like the Asian ones are passed off as German Blue's because they fetch more money. Same thing with the Apistogramma Viejita. 99.99% of all Viejita's sold are actually Macmasteri but Viejita's are more exotic and can fetch more money.

Lwts make a new thread for apistos. Lol this thread has been hijacked.