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At what size would you be able to sex champsochromis?

820 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  climacoolair
I have an all male hap/peacock tank and have wanted a male of one of these for a while. I have never seen a mature male but picked up a smaller juvenile from RCA a few weeks back. They had some larger 6+ inch ones there but they looked really ragged and so I did not chance it and bought one of the smaller ~3.5-4" examples from another tank. The fish I have is about 4" and I chose (though a lot of it was guessing) what I hope to be a male. The fish I have does have egg spots on the anal fin. Do females of this species frequently have the spots as well? I do not remember the others having the spots as noticeable if at all in the tank I picked from, which is kind of why I went with this fish. There is blue on the lips and a faint blue hue to the sides but I do not think it is more than what a female might be capable of. The black horizontal bar is still present down the side but is kind of blurry and not really dark. At about what size would a male start to become somewhat obvious? I was thinking about 6-7" and have searched the net but have not found much info.
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4-5" males can show bluish green shine and lose the stripe. Sounds like you made the best guess from a juvenile group. In any juvenile group of the same species, one or two males will rise to the top. More color in the anal fin, a shine to the face or dorsal are early signs of masculinity.

In a group with other males, it's hard to predict when a male will color up much. Depends on the tank size, other fish, size of other fish...
One of our females has egg spots on her anal fin. The male grows larger faster so if you have a few it is easier to pick them out.

The blue sheen on the face is a dead give away. The dorsal on the male is pointier, longer and more swept.
There is no fin development yet. Thanks for the info guys.
At that size you should definitely see some colour and egg spots on males in particular the face.

Dave
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