Sexing The Young Of Livebearers

[Richard James Patrick]

Hello there I,ve had my 180 litre tank up and running (used fishless cycling by the way) for 6 months now. It's been a big sucess and great fun and I now have about 30 adult fish, a mixture of guppies, platys and mollies. However livebearers being livebearers I also have a mixture of fry of various ages in my tank, every week there seems to be new editions to the tank, which I'm loving by the way. I call the guppy fry guppy puppies, hillarious I know. Any way what I was wondering was at what age would you be able to tell what sex the young fish are. At the moment they all look female, I'm using the anal fin method to identify this. My oldest home-reared fish (4 Coral Platys) are 3 monts now and they all look female. Does anyone Know at what age sex is determined and what are the factors influencing the sex?

 

[helterskelter]

well there is no specific times on this but male can start to sex out at 6-8 weeks and upto 5-6 months in guppies, and mollies, platies and sword tails can take much longer; 6-8 weeks and upto a year old for some late developers.

 

[Richard James Patrick]

well there is no specific times on this but male can start to sex out at 6-8 weeks and upto 5-6 months in guppies, and mollies, platies and sword tails can take much longer; 6-8 weeks and upto a year old for some late developers.

Does mother nature balance things out male/female wise or can you end up with alot more of one sex than the other?

 

[clinton ><>]

you tend to get more female then to males its in genetics of the fish realy but its more popular to get more females

 

[Richard James Patrick]

you tend to get more female then to males its in genetics of the fish realy but its more popular to get more females

At what age is it suitable to donate the fry to other friends with tanks. Should they be kept in their birthplace for a certain amount of time?

 

[helterskelter]

you tend to get more female then to males its in genetics of the fish realy but its more popular to get more females

Sadily it's not true, some time you get more males as these have more colour and tend to be picked off by predators, so if the males was killed they would be buggered (well apart from the P. formosa these have no male fish in the wild).

Some times they produce more males, some time more females, pH, temp and other facters are though to affect this ratio, but nothing has been proved unlike in some repiles where temp is the major factor to ratio's.

As for sale sive as soon as the other fish will not eat then, 3-4 mouths they should be fully grown.

 

[Richard James Patrick]

Thanks for that info all. I'm loving the process of breeding, not that I'm very involved or anything, they seem more than capable of working things out themselves. I'm really looking forward to seeing the transformation of a guppy fry into a stunning adult male, I've got about 7 guppy fry at the moment so one's bound to be male.