[bluepitbullz]

I was lucky enough to come across some juvies of these a few months ago so i nabbed up a male and 3 females... 2 weeks ago the first spawn occured... the female is about 1.5 inches so she only held 13 fry... 3 or 4 of the fry are almost transparent while the rest of them are dark brownish color... wondering if anyone with experience with these guys knows if the light ones are males... reason i ask is im tryin to give the proper ratio to a buddy of mine for breeding... also how long is it till i can definately start seeing the bright yellow color on the dorsal fins of these lil guys?

 

[cichlidaholic]

I wouldn't even make an attempt to visually sex them at this size.

I would expect them to be around 2 1/2 inches before you see any yellow.

 

[why_spyder]

I don't think you'd be able to sex them until at least 1" - and then you'd have continually seperate out every male that starts to color up... Your best bet would be to wait until they are 1.5"-2" in size to get a good, accurate sexing of the group.

I saw yellow in mine at 1.5", but it really didn't get intense until I sold them to a buddy and they grew up a bit more (see the photo contest entry "Hai Reef" by Almo).

Here's a photo of what mine looked like at about 1.5" (quite a change from this to the photo contest maturity ).