Help me gender my cories and pleco?

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biofish

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I have no basis for gendering lol. Iā€™ve only heard that ladies tend to be larger and rounder tummies. I had to deconstruct my tanks to move them so I took a few pictures.

Candy stripped pleco (I think female I have two and my other one is much smaller and skinner but couldnā€™t get a good pic)
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Cory catfish (I have a lot but these two are the biggest and I honestly canā€™t tell. They all look narrow and not round at all)
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Bronze / albino corys iv always sexed by size and body shape females are noticeable thicker , fatter and generally larger .
 
Female Corydoras get bigger than males, and when viewed from above, they are noticeably wider and fatter. Males are smaller and slimmer.

Male suckermouth catfish usually develop bristles on their nose and the edge of their pectoral (side) fins. Females normally don't have any bristles, however in some species the females will get 2 or 3 small bristles on their nose.
 
I have no basis for gendering lol. Iā€™ve only heard that ladies tend to be larger and rounder tummies. I had to deconstruct my tanks to move them so I took a few pictures.

Candy stripped pleco (I think female I have two and my other one is much smaller and skinner but couldnā€™t get a good pic)
View attachment 162366
View attachment 162367

Cory catfish (I have a lot but these two are the biggest and I honestly canā€™t tell. They all look narrow and not round at all)
View attachment 162368View attachment 162369
are you sure the pleco isn't a Panaquolus maccus (Clown)
 
I have been working with plecos for some time. While body shape can help. it is not anywhere near 100% reliable. If I have two plecos in a small tank which are close to sexually mature, I can easily determine their sex by observing their behavior. But I work with plecos on groups. When they are not close to spawning age.size, the only way I know to reliably sex them is by venting them.

If you can have them put their tube out, you can tell from the shape of it what sex they are. The male will have a more pointed triangular shape while the female will have a more rounded blob shape, he only needs to pass out sperm, but she need to pass eggs.

Here are pics of two male and two female Hypancistrus L173b
Male
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Male
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Female
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Sorry this one is less clear, but you can still just see it.
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Here is an interesting fdact about plecos gals and eggs. When I would discover a dad on a newly fertilized batch of eggs I could not figure out how they could have fit inside the female. The egg pile was too big to have come from such a small fish. It took a more experienced fish keeper to explain it to me. When the eggs are inside the female they are somewhat dehydrated and that means they are smaller. As she lays them they immdeiately absorb water and swell to their full size.

There are other physical clues which can be helpful in sexing if the fish is not too young. males tende to get bushy odontile growth near the gill plate. They will also often develop odontile growth along their flanks. These serve as a weapon when males spar to determine a pecking order, and thus, who will get to spawn and who will not< Just as the males in a gorup have a pecking order , so too do the females. Only the top females get to spawn. This also means that the bigger females, who can make/hold the most eggs, are the ones who will normally get to spawn. It is just another example of how mother nature works to insure the odds of the best genes getting passed on and the most offspring being produced per spawn.
 
are you sure the pleco isn't a Panaquolus maccus (Clown)

He looks an awful lot like my clown pleco. Mine is fattening up on this new driftwood but I think I am too far away for a date for them.... can clown plecos breed with ABNs?
 
He looks an awful lot like my clown pleco. Mine is fattening up on this new driftwood but I think I am too far away for a date for them.... can clown plecos breed with ABNs?
No I would say they donā€™t under natural conditions , Iā€™m not even sure they could even breed under lab conditions there pretty far apart genetically considering there both labelled pleco
 
She may be a she and plumping up, but not a young pleco, I think I got her in 2014. No other clowns here...
 
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A clown pleco? Huh. Googling images shows theyā€™re extremely similar to candy striped.

This is my other allegedly candy stripped pleco, Nessie, who is much less shy + a heck of a lot smaller if yā€™all wanna checkā€¦ (the white spots are just sand! I watched for a good while and the particles fell off)

Also thank you for the gendering help! I should be able to gender the little guy in this post because heā€™s the only one that comes out to say hi LOL. Waldo I never see unless I remove the decorations.
 

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