Sexing Tiger Barbs

[salemchic]

For the life of me I can't determine if this thing is male or female...The pics aren't great, but someone may be able to figure it out...Please help if you can!

http/members.cox.net/lindsayp/fish/fish.htm

 

[parker313]

From what I know of sexing tiger barbs, males have red on their noses so I guess that would make it a male. Do a google search on sexing tiger barbs and you'll come up with some good hits.

 

[salemchic]

Ok...well...if it's male, then that leads me to question #2:

Why is my fish gigantically fat? If it were female, I'd say she was preganant, but male, it's have to be something else. And I can't figure out what...none of my other fish look like this.

 

[Vegan Peaches]

Don't barbs lay eggs? I don't think they get p[regnant 0.o I could be wrong...

Maybe it just likes to eat

 

[salemchic]

Same thing...they get fat before they do their little breeding/egglaying thing.

 

[guppymonkey]

I don't know that much about tiger barbs but I know the male gets red coloration at breeding time. I am not sure why one would be so much larger then the other as you describe. Maybe it is older and more mature? Or do barbs have sexual dimorphism? I know that the male in some species of fish are larger then the female.

 

[salemchic]

I dunno...Maybe he's just a little chubby...He's actually kind of a runt compared to the rest. I got them all at the same time, but he's always been smaller. It's caused me troubles breeding before too...I had to get a new male to breed with because this one I guess wasn't good enough for my girls... Lord knows...He also seems to have a strange deformity on his lip. I thought that maybe it was a bacterial infection or something, but i couldn't find anything, and it looks more like it's puckered than has something growing on it or anything like that. Poor guy...lol. He's been truckin' for a while with it though, quite a few months and no probs so i figure he's fine, just ugly. My friend calls him Bubba like the guy from Forrest Gump

 

[Cavafish]

I believe that male TB's have red noses and that the gils noses are pale. my females are all wider than the males although the males do have fat bellies as they eat everything they see.

HTH

Cava

 

[willywonka099]

Well I recently looked this subject up and form what I understand the nose isn't always true ..... does any breeder know about this for sure ?