Help With Bolivian Ram Sexing Please :)

[JoshH]

Afternoon
I've had a 'pair' of rams nearly 3 weeks now, I was sold them as a pair from LFS, however I'm unsure as to whether or not I have a female! I have one who im 99% sure is male, and the other who i thought to be female. They seem to go through stages together, the larger 'male' seems to chase her around and she swims extremely fast away...they're doing it as i type funnily enough! When he catches up with her he never bites just kinda touches her side with his mouth!

I'm unsure on what breeding rams behaviour is, apparantly these two bred in my LFS so I was told, but they dont seem all that loved up right now In between the chasing she is either hiding and colours up with a lot of very dark grey/black across her (why is this?) or theyre swimming round happily picking up gravel, chewing it and spitting it out again lol.

Below is some pics for a little help on sexing from you guys
The both of them.

My Male ( I think) has the taller first three spines on top fin

What I believe to be my female

Any help is much appreciated If they do turn out to be male and female, is it just a case of them not being compatible?

 

[minxfishy]

Yeah the one with the black spines to his fin is male and the other less colourful is female, IMO, however they still look quite young to me, he may well be stressing her with trying to 'get it in' hence the colouration on her sometimes. Even if they turn out not to be a couple, you should be ok as rams arent really aggressive and once settled in they will find their own territories with the occassional chasing, especially at feeding time as I found with my pair.

 

[Gilli]

Yep - top pic - top male lower female. They always have a love hate relationship - one minute they are all loved up the next they fall out!! You will find they lose their colour and a black line appears down the middle of thier body when they are unhappy.

Dont worry about it - its all part of their complicated little relationship!!