Please ID/sex

[mordor]

About month ago I got these fishes as a pair of Laethacara Dorigera. Recently I posted it on some other forum and I got reponse that they might be two females not a pair. What do you think?

 

[apistodave]

Looks like a pair to me top is Fem

 

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

How can you tell?

 

[apistodave]

well its kind of an instinctual thing, the top one has shorter fins athe bottom one has more Red but really its just a guess

 

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

I dunno. To me the anal fins look the same. Can't really compare
dorsal fins - it looks like the dorsal in the top picture is folded back
a little. The angle in the first picture is throwing off a true comparision.
Infact, it almost seems that the fish in the top picture has a hump
on its head - a male characteristic, though I know it's 'a feeling' caused
by the angle of the fish when the picture was taken.

I dunno. Its difficult to tell.

 

[tjudy]

This species is hard to sex.. especially if the fish are still young and not spawning yet.

 

[Randall]

Sexing Laetacara dorsigera

Dear Mordor,

Based on the head profile, I'd say the top photo is of a male, and the bottom photo is of a female. The unpaired fins of the fish in the bottom photo, however, look consistent with those of a male. Have you considered getting another pair? That way you're pretty much assured of having a true pair.

When all else fails, the one who lays the eggs is generally the female!

Good luck with them; beautiful fish.

All the best,

Randall Kohn

 

[laetacara1]

Dorsigera are indeed very tricky to sex. Most of the pairs we keep, or have kept, have small systematic differences in dorsal and anal fin elongation (i.e, more elongation in the male), but there are exceptions. We currently have a female who has significantly more elongation in both fins than the male she's spawned with and she is about the same size. She is a bit skinnier than the male. We were positive she was a male until she paired up for the first time and her vent came down.