How to make sneaker males come out of the closet?

[apisto420]

hey guys, i have 5 apistogrammas left, they are young guys, about a inch long, just about to reach adulthood and about a year old.. their parents died and there is no dominant male in the tank..

how long till these guys show their selves? is there anything i can do to make them come out faster??

 

[wethumbs]

Good food and good water usually do the trick. What type of Apisto is it? There are not too many Apisto species that would take a year to reach maturity.

 

[gerald]

Sneaker males look like females because a dominant male suppresses them. Without a dominant male, there's no reason to be a sneaker. If yours are more than 9 months old and all still look like females, they probably are females.

 

[slimbolen99]

I don't know. I had five female black chins in with a dominant male in a 75. I had to move them to smaller quarters, and put three females in a tank by themselves, and two females and the dominant male in another. I now have two trios -- sneaker male showed up and grew his fins out -- and these guys were over a year old. Had no idea!

 

[Mike Wise]

They're right. As long as there is a dominant male, a sneaker male will try to look like a female. If your apistos have been without a dominant male for 9 months, then there is a very good possibility that they all are females.