How Can You Tell Female From Male Angle Fish?

[invader]

Honestly, the best thing you could do with your fish is feed them reg. flake and frozen food and stay away from feeder fish. The only fish that really need feeders are the ones who cannot be weaned off of them, which are not very common in the trade anyway. Any standard angel or tiger barb really shoudn't eat fish as a strict diet.

 

[grimmy]

that why i said i would feed as a treat

 

[Tolak]

You can't tell beyond about 80% reliability until they are actually spawning. It is impossible to tell with juvies, you are just guessing. If you have a group of angels that are nearly adults of the same age, and are settled in their environment, you cantell a bit by the behavior if you watch for a while. Often the males are a bit more aggressive. You can guess that the largest two of the group are male, the smallest two of the group are female. The females are often a bit wider. This will give you about 80% accuracy, plain guessing is 50%.

Check out the angelfish microhatchery site; http/webrbiz.com/angelfish/amh.html This will give you a reasonable idea as to what you need.

Before you consider breeding anything, you will need buyers, and then tankspace. No buyers means you have a lot of fancy looking feeders, not enough tank space means you have some not so fancy looking feeders due to fin deformities from overstocking.

 

[grimmy]

ok what do u mean by feeders are you talking about the guppies

 

[Tolak]

No, I am talking about feeding angels to a larger fish. With any breeding program you are going to have culls, what many breeders do is keep a larger fish to take care of fish that do not meet quality standards. I have a 10" oscar that takes care of culls, pea size angels are a snack for him.

If many fish are deformed you will have many feeders. If you can't sell the fish you will have to increase tank space as they grow, or feed them to whatever takes care of culls as well.

Angels themselves don't need feeders, and this will not help if you are trying to get them to parent raise. Live brine shrimp, bloodworms, or blackworms are a better alternative.

 

[grimmy]

oh ok

 

[confusion]

I have some really big angels - you can see them here: http/aquariu.ms/images/v/aquarium/DSC_0041.JPG.html

They've never been interested in smaller fish - unless they were fry - my angels are fry vacuums.

Anyway, in the picture above ( and some of the others), you can see that the males have an enlarged head. I don't believe the females will grow like that. However, no all males are like that. I have a breeding pair here: http/aquariu.ms/images/v/aquarium/DSC_0091.JPG.html where the smaller one is actually the male. Interestingly, they are about the same age. I bought them both when they were about the size of a dime at the same time.

I do have another breeding pair (no pics yet) that look identical, except the male is just slightly bigger than the female, though it could be that he is older - I bought them when they were a bit larger.

It's a crap shoot. To be honest, I couldn't tell which was male and which was female (save the big males with the forehead issues) until the females laid eggs.

 

[grimmy]

very nice angels i have a golden and a marbled angels