Fish Id

[IanS]

Hi people.....looking to find out if anyone can help to ID these fish... bought these from PAH yesterday but they were advertised as varoius apistogramma ?? could they be apistogramma macmasteri.....cacatuoides or whatever hard to tell they all look quiet similar when young
could not resist at £7 for the pair

The first 2 pics are what i think is a male it is the larger of the two, pics 3, 4 & 5 am hoping is a female

Any help greatly appreciated

Ian

 

[Essjay]

It can be hard to tell the species of female apistos as a lot of them look the same. The other thing I'd be concerned about if you wanted a pair of the same species is the term "various apistogramma". That sounds like they had males and females of several different species in the tank and you could have a male from species A and a female from species B.
They sometimes have a tank of "mixed fish" (usually tetras) in a garden centre near me, but at least with them you can tell which are which.

Edit
Oh, and both fish look like females to me!

 

[IanS]

It can be hard to tell the species of female apistos as a lot of them look the same. The other thing I'd be concerned about if you wanted a pair of the same species is the term "various apistogramma". That sounds like they had males and females of several different species in the tank and you could have a male from species A and a female from species B.
They sometimes have a tank of "mixed fish" (usually tetras) in a garden centre near me, but at least with them you can tell which are which.

Edit
Oh, and both fish look like females to me!

Yeah i see what your saying they originaly 5/6 and this was the last 2 in tank and they all looked the same, whether they were were all they same species is a different story... guess it will have to be mail order fish if am looking to get particular species
thanks anyway

Ian

 

[karin]

The first looks female with those distinctive black markings and the second looks male to me but I couldn't tell you the specific subspecies. Good luck.

 

[Essjay]

It's the black pelvic fins that made me think they were both females. That's the pair fins on the underside of the fish. The first two pics (fish 1) definitely has black pelvic fins. Pics 3, 4 and 5 (fish 2) are harder to see as the fins are being held tight to the body, but they look black to me as well.
If either or both turn yellow, that is a sure sign of a female. The only yellow male apisto I have is my gold cacatuoides male - and he's definitely a male because of his huge dorsal fin extensions. But I've never seen a female apisto any other colour but brownish (immature or stressed) or yellow (mature), both with black markings.

 

[IanS]

It's the black pelvic fins that made me think they were both females.

Just had another look and the smaller fish definitely has black pelvic fins......so what would you look for to distinguish a male ??

Thanks

Ian

 

[Essjay]

That depends very much on the species. With some, the first few rays of the dorsal fin are very long (cacatuoides, trifasciata), some have tails that go to a point (agassizi), some have much taller dorsal fins than females (borelli, hongsloi). Most males tend to have longer pelvic fins that females, longer anal fins and the end of the dorsal fin often trails into a point.

And mature, non-stressed males are colourful, blue, red, orange rather than just yellow.