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Pearl Gourami Sexing

6688 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  Aaronious, 
hirundo
I got 4 young pearl gouramis ~4-5 months ago, hoping for 1 male and 3 females. They've all recently started bickering a lot. One definitely seems to be male (and is the most aggressive), but I can't tell with the other three, which all look the same as each other to me.

Are those three just smaller males? Or grouchy females? I find the "males have pointier fins" advice to be useless because no pearl gourami fin ever looks pointy to me, but the most aggressive one is starting to develop the bigger and streamier anal fin.

Thanks for your help!
Photograph Vertebrate Botany Green Fin
Vertebrate Botany Green Nature Water
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latchdan
2 definitely female (1,3 is hard to tell I'ma say female too) see the fin by the tail it's rounded vs the male looks frayed. It becomes more obvious when they get bigger
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Aaronious
Of the three you labeled, all three look female to me. Usually once they have all these colors and are not as see through looking or pale, you can tell by the dorsal fin. Males have longer and swept back a bit. Females have a short, more triangular dorsal fin. as the get older, the males get those frills on their anal and dorsal fins. I just raise a group of these and have been watching them a lot. Good looking ladies though, lucky guy.

If there are some floating plants you can have fry in just a few months!
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hirundo
Aaronious said:
If there are some floating plants you can have fry in just a few months!
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I see what you're talking about with the dorsal fins. Excellent! Does the squabbling mean I should remove a female or two? (...maybe after another month or two to confirm sexes?) Or are they just going through the obnoxious teenager phase?
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Aaronious
hirundo said:
I see what you're talking about with the dorsal fins. Excellent! Does the squabbling mean I should remove a female or two? (...maybe after another month or two to confirm sexes?) Or are they just going through the obnoxious teenager phase?
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They're active fish. Likely they are establishing a pecking order. This will only take a couple days. Usually anyway. Eventually they should be pretty peaceful until they begin to spawn, or try to. Male will begin a bubble nest and start to chase the females. It's good you have more so he doesn't harass one too much. Eventually, there will be eggs and fry, here the male will become very territorial of his new babies. He'll chase every other fish away. I have had them take over a whole half a tank. This stops once the babies or nest are gone. He'll keep making a nest. But the babies will only disappear if you take them out or eventually they will be eaten. They will produce like 200 so it will take awhile for them to all disappear.

Oh and females are great. lol. I had a bunch of babies. the smallest 6 are still growing up and look to be all female. So just general squabbling in their future. I may even keep most of them.
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