Blue ram sexes?

[Apisto Joe]

I have a pair of blue rams i recently purchased and am wanting to sex them. They are about 1" and 1 1/4" the larger being much more colorful (almost no black). the larger has the blue speckles all around and on her side black spot while the other doesnt have the blue on the black. I would normally think this would obviously be a male and female, the female being the larger due to the blue on the black spot. unfortunately the fish are throwing me curve balls, at times they both have the blue on their black spots and at times they both will not so its hard to tell. i dunno really.

Help wanted!
Joe

 

[fishgeek]

smaller size and redder belly on the female

 

[Mike Wise]

smaller size and redder belly on the female

That may be true on adult fish, but these are still young. Give them time. The male will have a more stretched black flank patch with a few blue scales along the outer perimeter. Females have a more rounded black flank patch with blue scales in the interior part of the patch.

 

[Apisto ranch]

It's really not to hard on blue rams to tell the differnts even at a young age the males dorsal fin and anul fin will be more pointed and reach back passed the tail fin on the female the dorsal fin will be more rounded and the anul fin as well the fins won't reach pass the tail fin.
I got some pics of a really young females I'll dig out and post to show the differnts in the fins.

 

[Apisto ranch]

Ok I had to take more pics and that was fun

this frist pic is of a adut male look at how the dorsal and anul fins go pass the start of the tail fin

this one is young femal notice the rounded fins and them not reaching the tail area

another of an even younger female

 

[Apisto Joe]

Thanks for the help and pics guys. btw nice fish apisto ranch!

 

[Mike Wise]

Apisto ranch's male appear to be one of the "long-finned" Rams. Most wild & German Rams don't have such long soft dorsal fins.

 

[Apisto ranch]

That is ture with the wild ones. I just thought that sents he had bought them from a lfs they had to be from a tame line of german blues. Most of the bolivines rams also have this long flowing fins.
As for the greman blues from F1 to F2 start to develope this trait. Once the line progresses the long fins develope more and more. Til they reach what that sell at your lfs.

 

[Mike Wise]

German blue Rams are an old (30 years at least) established domestic color strain of M. ramirezi. The long-finned strain first appeared in Asian-bred Rams about 20 years ago. You don't see it very often anymore. It probably has been mixed with other domestic strains by many commercial Asian breeders, so the trait appears in some of the offspring. You almost never see long fins in European German Blue Rams.