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blue dolphin moorii red/brown anal fin?

3K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  phillum 
#1 ·
I went yesterday to a LFS and they had some blue dolphin moorii in and i went ahead and bought 3 from them, I noticed the ones they had in which was about 10 or so most of them had some sort of this reddish/brown colour on the anal fins of the dolphin moorii. The guy there said it might be the light and so i took his word and when i brought the 3 back into my tank 2 of them look more normal looking now they had a hint of red which is gone now and the 3rd one still has this colour on it in my tank. Is this normal? I have never seen this before and the LFS apparently is one of the best shops around in my area they take extremely good care of their fish their tanks are really clean all their fish look really healthy so i had no reason to doubt them. First 2 pictures is the dolphin with the strange coloured fin next 2 are the other 2 i bought with it from the same tank.

i have a very large group of 14 of around the same size as these about 1-3 inches each dolphins at the moment 7 from one seller and 7 from another so 2 sources and now a third source these ones which makes it 17. The other 2 groups none have this red colour to them I'm wanting to breed them and will eventually thin my group out keep the best looking 2-3 males and remove extra males and keep whatever females i got.

on a side note i read around for sexing dophins at this size can be done? I wanted more females so i tried to pick them out based on the anal fins did i pick the correct sexes? the one male looking one has a very long pointed anal fin past the tail fin and the other 2 are blunt short and not past the tail fin?

Any help would be appreciated thanks.
 

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#2 ·
I assume you mean what you can see in the 2nd picture. They seem okay to me. Moorii do go through some markings transformations as they mature. I have noticed that juveniles often have some faint red spots in the tail, that are not noticable in adults. The anal fin may have some phantom eggspots that disappear. Many Malawi "Haps" and Aulonocara do have some anal fin markings that come and go, these are the residual eggspots that their ancestors once had, they are all Haplochromines.
 
#3 ·
noki said:
I assume you mean what you can see in the 2nd picture. They seem okay to me. Moorii do go through some markings transformations as they mature. I have noticed that juveniles often have some faint red spots in the tail, that are not noticable in adults. The anal fin may have some phantom eggspots that disappear. Many Malawi "Haps" and Aulonocara do have some anal fin markings that come and go, these are the residual eggspots that their ancestors once had, they are all Haplochromines.
Yes the 2nd picture is what i mean, the other 2 had some faint red prior to this but most of it is gone now. I thought they might have been hybrids at first but they looked very much like dolphins and didn't see anything else that would hint something else. I quite like the colour on it's anal fin, looks quite unique just didn't want to end up breeding hybrids. I'm thinking of picking up a few more since most of the rest they still have left have this particular trait and their fish are very healthy looking and they take excellent care of their fish.
 
#5 ·
good to hear, i just looked at these 3 again and in the light they have this slight faint red hue in them. Wondering if they will keep it when they get older, All the dolphins i ever saw in all the LFS and online they are always light/dark blue only.
 
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